14 DAY TRIAL // Western Digital, one of the worldwide leading providers of storage solutions, is reported to announce its readiness to make the first steps into the SSD market segment. According to Richard Rutledge, Western Digital's SVP for marketing, the company is waiting for the “appropriate opportunity” to make the move. As many of you already know, SSDs have begun to gain more and more ground on the market, although they come at considerably higher prices than HDDs. A recently published interview with some of the people from Seagate, another major player in the HDD industry, unveiled that the company was also planning to shift to SSD products next year.
When talking about the SSD market, Richard Rutledge said that, “Western Digital enters markets that exist, announces products when they are available, and runs a tight model with opportunities greater than resources such that we take a controlled, methodical, sequential, incremental approach to product portfolio expansion.” He also added that, “We do not currently supply to either several platform categories [game console, car, phone] or product categories [SAS/FC-AL on 10K/15K, SSD]. This said, we know [and] understand each of these segments and are open to enter any [or] all of them when they present appropriate opportunity.”
According to Rutledge, SSDs with prices less than $30 will be used “in consumer handheld mobile platforms.” He also said that a new product would probably emerge on the market, placed between handheld mobile devices and netbooks, a so-called SmartBook, and that it would also use low cost SSDs. Western Digital analyzed the storage needs and the technologies used in this value area, having plans to enter it to compete with Silicon Motion and Intel.
Rutledge also talked about a high-end value zone for SSDs, which includes drives that cost more than $199 a piece, yet did not say anything about WD targeting this area as well. Still, he has compared SSDs and HDDs, saying that, while spinning platters are a little slower, they seem more robust than the fast performing but rather fragile SSDs. Even so, the fact that the company considers the area an existing market is a clear sign that SSDs will be widely adopted in the future.