We’ve seen some pretty nifty deals on SSDs with the whole Black Friday discount bonanza of late, but don’t get used to this – in fact, the sad truth is that prices for solid-state drives are set to rise as we head towards Christmas.
In fact, according to a report from market analyst TrendForce, the average price for mainstream SSDs is expected to rise from between 6 to 10% in the final quarter of this year (compared to last quarter).
And going into next year, prices are expected to climb further still in Q1 of 2017. So if you were poised to pull the trigger on an SSD purchase, now is definitely the time to do so rather than hanging around deliberating.
SSDs are certainly in demand, particularly when it comes to notebooks.
Price gap
Alan Chen, senior research manager of DRAMeXchange, the memory and storage division of TrendForce, commented: “The price gap of 128GB and 256GB SSDs versus 500GB and 1TB HDDs grew larger than expected in the second half of 2016 due to the sharp rise in SSD prices.
“Nonetheless, SSD demand in the PC-OEM market is gaining strong momentum as SSDs in general have surpassed HDDs in terms of price to performance. The pace of SSD adoption in both consumer and commercial segments of the notebook market has exceeded DRAMeXchange’s estimation.”
SSD adoption across the worldwide notebook market is set to pass the 30% mark this year, and should rise above 50% perhaps before the end of next year, or in 2018, according to Chen – despite the lack of supply in NAND Flash, which is the catalyst for the current price rises.
However, as CNET reports, there is brighter news for the future, as towards the end of next year, these supply issues are expected to ease considerably, and with that so should SSD prices.
