People who work in and carefully watch the solid-state disk industry are generally pretty optimistic that prices are going to continue to come down this year and next as the market expands and competition among the manufacturers increases. This will be largely, but certainly not all, at the expense of Serial ATA (SATA) and tape drives.
Industry analysts have reported that prices have come down an average of 48 percent over the last two years. More cuts apparently are on the way.
Key SSD providers, such as Samsung, Hitachi, WD, Micron, LSI, and Intel are currently in a price war at their various positions in the market. This was a much-discussed topic at the recent ExecEvent cloud systems and storage conference in Santa Clara, Calif.
With this as background, it may be worth it to check out this news if you are planning to purchase a solid-state disk or two soon: Intel is lowering its prices by as much as 38 percent on its SSD 320, SSD 330 and SSD 520 series. Most lower-capacity models of the SSD 320 series are not affected by this new policy.
In additional news, Intel on July 16 revealed that it is adding a whopping 240GB model to its 300 series consumer product line.