14 DAY TRIAL // Kingston's debut in the SSD market has been made possible by the company's partnership with Intel. However, since the debut of the first Kingston branded SSDs, the company has grown significantly, having expanded its lineup with new solutions, such as the recently introduced 40GB SSDNow V-series, specifically designed as a performance drive, for the boot partition of a desktop or notebook PC. The company has recently been promoting its SSD lineup, with media meetings all over Europe. We had the pleasure to sit down and have a discussion with Adrien Viaud, application engineer, Kingston Technology.
He went through the company's plans in the SSD market and showed how Kingston's strategy is aimed at the consumer, providing him with value for money. We also discussed the company's Q3 performance, after the expansion of its SSD portfolio, from the Intel-based solutions to new products aimed at the mainstream segment. So, without further ado, here's the interview.
Following the release of a complete new line of Solid State Drives, what are Kingston's plans for the future, in the SSD market?
Adrien Viaud: Our plans include higher capacities, because really people want to higher capacities, which is the main drawback of SSDs, at the moment. We will also work with our suppliers and different suppliers to get new hardware and new controllers to increase the performance of SSDs. We are also looking into a solution that includes SATA 3, this new specification that has been released on some motherboards, already. We are working on a 512GB solution, which is currently in development. TRIM is also something that we are working on.
You said that you are working on with suppliers for new hardware and controllers. We are wondering if you have settled for a couple of partners and their solutions, or are you looking for new partners and new technologies that would improve your products and enable a better experience for the consumer?
Adrien Viaud: We are always looking for new suppliers, because as you know, the range (of products) goes from the V-series, which is a value for money solution, to the E-series, from Intel, which is really for the corporate environment and server environment. So, we will also be looking at different controllers with different performance, but really, the main target for us is to provide value for money solution, performance/value ratio should be really good. We also work on the use of use of SSD, on the upgradability of the HDD to SSD with your bundles and Acronis software.
Do you believe that your bundles will improve the the user's perspective on the market and make customers to migrate to an SSD solution?
Adrien Viaud: I think that bundles have definitely showed that we try to find innovative ways to sell our products. There are a lot of companies out there that are selling SSDs as a bare drive, but what we are trying to do is to help the customer migrate from an HDD to an SSD. If you buy the drive on its own and want to migrate from hard disk to SSD, you'll need to purchase a software, you'll need Brackets for desktop systems. This is why, with this bundle we are really offering value for money and it's really successful and we are already selling a lot of those bundles. This is what sets Kingston apart from the competition and we are always looking to find new ideas and focus on really good value.
From you're experience in the market, bundles do better than bare drives?
Adrien Viaud: Yes, we are selling a lot of bundles. We are focusing on people that would like to start, to put their foot in the SSD world, which is why the bundle is a good solution for them, for those who want to try the SSD.
We saw that Q3 was especially good in terms of sales? Could you tell us what changed in Q3 that provided you with better numbers?
Adrien Viaud: The product range became wider, we were having more products. Q3 was really strong because the demand grew, which is why we entered the market a few months ago. We feel that the demand is starting now, people are starting to move to SSD technology.
What would you recommend to the end user, if he was looking to improve the performance of his system? Kingston's HyperX memory or SSDs?
Adrien Viaud: I would recommend both. But it really depends on what you want to do. I would really recommend the SSD as a performance drive, for the operating system, as a boot drive. This will definitely save on loading time for applications, for shutting down and starting up. HyperX memory is for the enthusiasts and for gaming, by overclocking your memory you'll get more FPS. It really depends on what you want, but the combination of the two would really speed up the system.