High Capacity SSD Pricing Forecasted To Hit All Time Low Later This Year

Now, a new report from DRAMeXchange -- by way of TrendForce -- is signaling that NAND flash oversupply is leading to an all-out pricing war among suppliers. That oversupply thankfully is going to lead to lower prices across the board, which is good news for those looking to score an SSD for a new build, to replace an older SSD, or to replace a HDD.

According to TrendForce, contract prices for both 512GB and 1TB SSD are forecast to drop below 10 cents per GB in the closing months of 2019. If this forecast holds steady, it will represent an all-time-low for SSD pricing. 

This pricing free-fall could lead many users to upgrade their old-hat 500GB and 1TB HDDs with 512GB and 1TB SSD counterparts. And once you go SSD, there's no going back as far as we're concerned. Another side-effect of the lower $/GB equation is that we may see 128GB SSDs fall by the wayside, especially in laptops. Instead, we could see a spike in the adoption of 256GB and 512GB capacities going forward for the mainstream market.

"The reasons for the continuous price fall in 2Q include: weakened stocking momentum due to the cautious stance of PC, smartphones and servers/datacenters OEMs towards end market sales and high inventory levels, leading to an overly oversupplied NAND flash market," writes TrendForce.

In other SSD news, it's predicted that SATA will continue to fall by the wayside as the interface of choice for mainstream PCs. Instead, the far superior PCIe interface will soon overtake SATA for a majority share of the SSD market as suppliers expand 64- and 72-layer NAND SSDs and push forward with 96-layer production.