SSD Shipments See Continued Growth Despite Shrinking PC Market: Analysis

[btarunr]

TRENDFOCUS recently published its updated Quarterly NAND/SSD report covering the NAND & SSD industries' performance in CQ2 '15. In the SSD market, unit shipments increased, despite the fact that a good portion of the volume is tied to a weak notebook PC market. The two main factors contributing to the slight 2.9% Q-Q rise was the increase in DFF (drive form factor) client SSDs in the channel market, as well as an uptick in datacenter demand for SATA SSDs, driving a total of 23.859 million units. Total SSD capacity shipped increased by 13.3% Q-Q to 6.4 exabytes, with the overall average capacity increasing to 268 GB. Despite the rise in overall unit shipments, client modules declined, reflecting the continued slow demand for notebook PCs.

Enterprise SAS SSDs declined 10% while PCIe SSDs in the enterprise segment remained under 100,000 units for the quarter. Enterprise SATA SSDs were the bright spot in the enterprise market, posting an increase of 48.6% Q-Q as datacenters resumed purchases of SSDs - a trend not seen in nearline HDDs during the quarter. Samsung continues to dominate due to its successes in the client space - both from a unit and exabyte perspective - while Kingston showed once again that it can be a major player by focusing on the channel market. HGST's unit and exabyte share leads the SAS SSD market and Intel continues to dominate the enterprise PCIe market for a second quarter in a row.



To purchase a copy of the analysis, visit TRENDFOCUS.

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[AsRock]

Poor Micron, i hope they can boost their sales. Sure they are in to other types of memory but would like to see them doing better in the SSD market.

 

[Overclocker_2001]

poor Toshiba-OCZ mb ;-)

unexpected player is LiteOn

 

[TheDeeGee]

Crucial in the "Others" section?

Why so low

 

[Blue-Knight]

Only 1 thing can explain Samsung's success: Marketing.

The art of "fooling" customers seems to be more effective than actually offering a good quality product. They know how to make money.

 

[Frick]

Only 1 thing can explain Samsung's success: Marketing.

The art of "fooling" customers seems to be more effective than actually offering a good quality product. They know how to make money.

And they're solid drives (last time I checked anyway) and decently priced. Soo.... Yeah.

Anyway, I'll be a proud owner of a Crucial BX100 this week. Should be good.

 

[Basard]

Still using my eight-year-old baracuda... it wont die!!! Lol...

ill be getting a SSD within the year... i feel it in my bones.... i need a sata iii motherboard actually lol. Wow im old...

 

[Frick]

Still using my eight-year-old baracuda... it wont die!!! Lol...

ill be getting a SSD within the year... i feel it in my bones.... i need a sata iii motherboard actually lol. Wow im old...

The speed increase will be massive anyway, unless you only have first gen SATA.

 

[Zubasa]

Crucial in the "Others" section?

Why so low

"Cruical by Micron"

 

[Easo]

Only 1 thing can explain Samsung's success: Marketing.

The art of "fooling" customers seems to be more effective than actually offering a good quality product. They know how to make money.

Realy? So the Pro series top performance and Evo awesome price/performance are just marketing?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

And they're solid drives (last time I checked anyway) and decently priced. Soo.... Yeah.

Anyway, I'll be a proud owner of a Crucial BX100 this week. Should be good.

well, the 840 evo wasnt exactly solid. the pros are pretty good though. It also might have something to do with the OEMs, every OEM machine ive seen with a ssd has been a samsung drive. crucial needs to get into that market!

 

[HWTactics]

I'm a little shocked that Crucial/Micron aren't higher up the ladder. Their SSDs have been solid as a rock. M4 anyone? Crucial makes a ton of great SSDs...

Lite-On only has any market share due to their sales with OEMs. You will find a lot of their SSDs in Dell and Acer laptops.

I expect we'll keep seeing SSDs selling well until there are no more desktops, laptops, servers or workstations left with spinning disks. If everyone owned an SSD already, sales would slow down. They last a lot longer than a cell phone that gets upgraded every other year.

 

[Basard]

The speed increase will be massive anyway, unless you only have first gen SATA.

Ya... it's SATA II.... So not too bad.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Only 1 thing can explain Samsung's success: Marketing.

The art of "fooling" customers seems to be more effective than actually offering a good quality product. They know how to make money.

As far as I'm concerned they make some of the best consumer SSDs on the market. They know how to make good drives.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Realy? So the Pro series top performance and Evo awesome price/performance are just marketing?

Alot of it is marketing, because Crucial's MX-100 and MX-200 have been super solid. They don't spend as much on marketing, but word of mouth has been strong, as well as reviews (including here on TPU).

 

[Aquinus]

Alot of it is marketing, because Crucial's MX-100 and MX-200 have been super solid. They don't spend as much on marketing, but word of mouth has been strong, as well as reviews (including here on TPU).

The BX100 250GB is for 85 USD on Amazon, same on NewEgg. I've bought Crucial for two other people and one for myself without any issues. They're the best, cheap, SSDs you can buy IMHO. I don't think the price is worth paying more for something else that is just as reliable.

 

[Wattery Fowls]

The BX100 250GB is for 85 USD on Amazon, same on NewEgg. I've bought Crucial for two other people and one for myself without any issues. They're the best, cheap, SSDs you can buy IMHO. I don't think the price is worth paying more for something else that is just as reliable.

the v4 hurt they're rep badly imho and while m4 was decent it also had firmware issues. the bx100 is a solid performer although its not compatible with baytrail based systems like lenovo b50/g50

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Alot of it is marketing, because Crucial's MX-100 and MX-200 have been super solid. They don't spend as much on marketing, but word of mouth has been strong, as well as reviews (including here on TPU).

Doesnt mean Samsung drives arent top tier along with Crucial drives. They both make fantastic drives in the consumer market.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Doesnt mean Samsung drives arent top tier along with Crucial drives. They both make fantastic drives in the consumer market.

Oh, you're absolutely correct! Didn't mean to imply the Samsungs aren't. In fact they are slightly better overall. However, a huge marketing budget has to account for quite a bit of the lopsided market share compared to Crucial, which are every bit as rugged and long-lived, and nearly as fast in some models.

 

[tabascosauz]

Only 1 thing can explain Samsung's success: Marketing.

The art of "fooling" customers seems to be more effective than actually offering a good quality product. They know how to make money.

I don't know what it is exactly that you seem to have against Samsung products. With the exception of the 840 EVO business and being late to fix the problems on that drive, Samsung has made a good reputation for themselves in the SSD business and consistently maintained that good reputation. The 850 EVO has been brought down to prices that make you wonder if Samsung just forgot about the added costs of V-NAND R&D. I couldn't, and still can't get a 512GB MX200 for $219, but I bought my 500GB 850 EVO for $219. XP941 is still a very fast drive and virtually without competition, although it is hard to find.

Plus, it wouldn't exactly be "fooling customers", but wasn't Crucial the company that caused quite a stir with not being very forthcoming with its power-loss technologies in the M500, M550, and MX100? For the M600, it's clearly stated in the Anand review that none of the three above drives have the same protections as the datacenter version of the M500, since none of them have the tantalum caps necessary to provide full power-loss protection to data that is currently being written. As a MX100 user, I would've liked to have known that the "power-loss" protection wasn't exactly as extensive as stated by Crucial, before I bought the drive.

Crucial's marketing approach leans toward the minimal side, while Samsung does a bit more to attract a wider audience. I don't see what this has to do with Samsung's drives being supposedly inferior to Crucial's; in fact, I see it as being the other way around. Crucial SSDs have not (yet) gotten around to offering longer warranties. Crucial's SSD Toolbox is in its infancy compared to established and well-respected competitors like Intel SSD Toolbox and Samsung Magician.

well, the 840 evo wasnt exactly solid. the pros are pretty good though. It also might have something to do with the OEMs, every OEM machine ive seen with a ssd has been a samsung drive. crucial needs to get into that market!

I can understand why some 840 EVO owners might be pissed off about Samsung's initially non-existent response to the speed issue, but quite frankly, the TLC in the 840 EVO was still very much a new technology despite the SSD 840 coming a bit earlier with TLC. There was hardly anything ground-breaking about, say, a M4 or MX100 (I have a MX100 myself, and even though it's a good drive, it's unremarkable).

Also, Crucial doesn't make a lot of OEM drives, while Samsung has entire lines dedicated to OEMs. OEM drives are sold under the Micron name (look at the M600). Then when you look at it, the difference between Sammy and the rest isn't as drastic as it's made out to be, since Crucial is part of Micron and Micron is under the IMFT umbrella with Intel.

EDIT: I stand corrected, as I've never before seen the 1TB MX200's 320TB rating. Which leads me to ask, why doesn't Crucial bother to extend its warranty period if the MX200 clearly is capable of such endurance?