14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this year, we informed you about Kingston's possible foray on the Solid State Drive market and about how it was initially expected for Q3 this year. However, the report was not that surprising, especially since almost every other flash-memory vendor had already released or announced its SSD offering, coming to meet the general trend on the market.
As far as Kingston was concerned, not many details were available as to how the company intended to approach the SSD business plan. Now, it seems that the flash-memory vendor has finally decided to unveil further details on the matter.
According to recent information, Kingston has decided to team up with Santa Clara, California-based Intel to market flash memory-based drives to notebook and server vendors. What this actually means is that Kingston will initially sell SSDs made by Intel, while the flash-memory company will deal with marketing and establishing sales channels, and providing technical support.
As some of you remember, Intel introduced its new high-performance SSDs in early September, as an alternative solution to all the current solutions on the market. Offered in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors, the X18-M and X25-M have been designed to deliver a high level of storage performance, providing both speed and high capacity at a price tag that was comparable to other SSDs on the market. The leading chip maker announced that its SSDs would become available in Q4 this year and, thus, joining forces with Kingston appears to be reasonable business plan.
As for Kingston, this appears to be a good opportunity for the company to debut on a market that is increasingly growing and becoming more competitive. In addition, working with Intel on delivering SSDs for the portable computer systems and server market marks yet another collaboration with the leading chip maker, as these companies are already working together on server DRAM modules.