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Samsung thumps Intel in SSD battle

by on21 April 2015


Catfight on SSDs makes Intel howl

Samsung ruled the global solid state drive (SSD) market last year with a market share double that of its main rival Intel.

According to beancounters at market research outfit HIS on April 20, Samsung Electronics had US$3.996 billion in sales last year in the global SSD market with a market share of 34 percent, while Intel posted US$1.99 billion in the same period with a market share of 17 percent.

So Intel's figure was just half of that of Samsung.

Intel is not doing that badly. In 2014, Intel's sales increased by almost 50 percent to beat Sandisk by a small margin and maintain the number two position. But at the same time Samsung's growth rate was even higher with 53 percent as it started mass-producing SSDs based on its vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology.

IHS also expected that Samsung's market share will reach 35 percent this year, while Intel will maintain its current market share to around 17 percent. Also, the figures of Samsung and Intel in 2016 are expected to be 35 percent and 16 percent.

This year Samsung Electronics introduced a new cutting-edge product line-up including Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe)-based SSDs and the portable SSD T1.

It also started the mass production of TLC-applied 3-bit V-NAND which is expected to shake up the next-generation SSD market.

NAND

According to the IHS forecast by need of demand of NAND flash in the market in the next five years from 2014 to 2019, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of demand for PCs, including SSDs, will reach 51.9 percent, surpassing the figure of mobile devices with 49.7 percent during the same period.

IHS also expected that the USB and flash card market would show a minus growth with 0.2 percent, while the growth of chips for tablet PCs will stay at 39.4 percent.

It is expected that the global SSD market will grow at an annual average rate of 21 percent from 83 million units sold in 2014 to 220 million units projected to be sold in 2019.

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