You'd think the interface would expand faster, but that's not the case

Sep 23, 2013 17:21 GMT  ·  By

You might have gotten the wrong idea, seeing as how us news writers don't bother writing about every little new flash drive out there, but the proportion of USB 3.0 models isn't really all that high.

In fact, the conclusion has been reached that, despite the upcoming release of cost-efficient crystal free USB 3.0 controller chips, sales won't grow much by year's end.

Coupled with the modest sales throughout the year thus far, that leads to a very low percentage of USB 3.0 flash drive units.

In fact, according to DRAMeXchange, out of all flash drives sold in 2013, only 10% will have SuperSpeed support, and more or less none of them USB 3.0 v2 (10 Gbps). Not that the new USB 3.0 specification can be found in the wild yet.

Meanwhile, many producers of controller chips have been backing out, due to Innostor Technology, Phison Electronics, and Silicon Motion basically taking over that segment.

Not sure how much better the share of USB 3.0 flash drives will be in 2014.