Summary
HDD makers need not fear that SSDs will ruin their business. It's not time to head for the hills. The basic economics of both HDD and SSD will prevent this from happening anytime in the foreseeable future, yet SSDs will do well in their own right when they are matched with appropriate markets.
Analysis
The article in question covered an interesting presentation at a conference that I attended. The presenter took an absurd, but all too common, perspective, and demolished it with very logical arguments. SSDs are not going to obliterate the HDD market because hard drives will always provide significantly less costly storage than can the flash used for SSDs.
With a flair for the dramatic, Dr. Hetzler also outlined the phenomenal capital requirements to achieve this end, just as SanDisk's president, Eli Harari did last August. Although Harari is a champion of the flash cause, he tempers his viewpoint with realism. In order for flash to take over even 10% of the HDD market we would have to see annual capital spending on the order of $30 billion, or about five times the peak of 2006.
Our firm, Objective Analysis, covers both the NAND and the SSD markets very thoroughly with reports and analysis. This information can be viewed at www.Objective-Analysis.com for those who want a real understanding of this issue.
