Kingston Digital Ships Second-most SSDs in Channel Worldwide in 2016

[btarunr]

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced it owns 16 percent of the global channel SSD unit market share for 2016. Data was compiled by the research firm, Forward Insights, which has been analysing the non-volatile semiconductor industry since 2008. Forward Insights has been at the forefront of providing independent market analysis and information to many manufacturers including Kingston.

According to Forward Insights, a total of 63 million SSDs were shipped worldwide in the channel in 2016 with Kingston accounting for nearly 10.1 million units. The amount represented 16 percent or second-most in the global market, showing Kingston's growth as one of the top suppliers of SSDs. The sales channel is comprised of distributors, resellers, retail/e-tail, system builders and solutions providers.



"The desire to switch to SSDs continues to grow as consumers and corporate customers alike see the performance benefits of upgrading from hard-disk drives," said Tony Hollingsbee, SSD Business Manager at Kingston. "For nearly 30 years, Kingston's focus and core sales strength has been with our channel partners worldwide. Our terrific relationship with them has helped make our SSD business grow globally since we shipped our first drive in 2009. The latest results from Forward Insights help validate these efforts and we certainly share this success with our channel partners."

"Our research showed third-party SSD manufacturers accounted for 60 percent of all channel shipments last year as a number of the semiconductor-based vendors de-emphasized their channel business," said Gregory Wong, President & Principal Analyst, Forward Insights. "Although under allocation since mid-Q2 2016, channel shipments as a whole remained strong and Kingston was one of the top leaders in this category."

For more information, visit this page.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Prima.Vera]

How is their reliability compared to Samsung's ones?

 

[silentbogo]

How is their reliability compared to Samsung's ones?

Reliability and even performance is not a major factor in this picture.
Mostly: worldwide availability and relatively low price. The only true competitors in this segment are ADATA, Patriot and SiliconPower.
Their newer models, based on Phison 3110-S10 are pretty good though (almost all HyperX SATA SSDs). So far haven't seen even one broken/malfunctioning drive.

Even Kingston USB thumbdrives are crap all the way around (including some of the premium USB 3.0 models), but for some reason people still buy them.
The best example is me. I am a devoted Kingston hater, and I still have one SSD, two thumbdrives and about 4 dead ones - all from Kingston.

Intel and Samsung get a big portion of their market share from OEMs and enterprise, but a regular retail consumer market is pretty much dominated by Kingston (especially a low-budget segment).

 

[Gungar]

Reliability and even performance is not a major factor in this picture.
Mostly: worldwide availability and relatively low price. The only true competitors in this segment are ADATA, Patriot and SiliconPower.
Their newer models, based on Phison 3110-S10 are pretty good though (almost all HyperX SATA SSDs). So far haven't seen even one broken/malfunctioning drive.

Even Kingston USB thumbdrives are crap all the way around (including some of the premium USB 3.0 models), but for some reason people still buy them.
The best example is me. I am a devoted Kingston hater, and I still have one SSD, two thumbdrives and about 4 dead ones - all from Kingston.

Intel and Samsung get a big portion of their market share from OEMs and enterprise, but a regular retail consumer market is pretty much dominated by Kingston (especially a low-budget segment).

When i see Kingston @16% and Sandisk @ only 7%, i don't know if i should cry or get mad or think that people are VERY stupid. I really don't know.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Even Kingston USB thumbdrives are crap

Kingston is the KingCRAP for everything... they cheat and their retail products is a mishmash of everything not the product you see in the reviews.

 

[MustSeeMelons]

When i see Kingston @16% and Sandisk @ only 7%, i don't know if i should cry or get mad or think that people are VERY stupid. I really don't know.

Whats wrong with Kingston SSD's? I have one, it was cheap and works fine..

 

[Gungar]

Whats wrong with Kingston SSD's? I have one, it was cheap and works fine..

We will talk again, when it will start to fail x)

 

[silentbogo]

Whats wrong with Kingston SSD's? I have one, it was cheap and works fine..

I have one too, that works fine so far (V300), but I also had 2 exact same drives of exact same size(120GB) that failed within 5-6 months. Good thing RMA process wasn't as horrendous as usual.
Hence, I only use ADATA or GOODRAM for customer's builds and upgrades.
Partially their old lineup was failing from bad Phison controllers, but later (when others started to manufacture drives on the same controller) I started to suspect that something else must be at play (cheap components, cutting corners etc.).
Their more expensive HyperX drives aren't bad.

EDIT:
Forgot one more example of why kingston is crap. When this thing was popular, it caused lots of headaches to repair guys, owners, buyers, sellers and alike. Only those revisions with Hynix eMMC chips survived (not all, but most).

 

[ironwolf]

Whats wrong with Kingston SSD's? I have one, it was cheap and works fine..

Stuff like this really pissed off people:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

Their HyperX line isn't terribly bad, the rest are pretty much bleh.