An Argument for 500GB Hard Disk Drives based Notebooks for College Students (or any younger adult for that matter)!
A colleague of mine brought up a great argument for why 500 GB Hard Disk Drives can remain the storage device of choice for most college students. In essence, it’s not the student’s choice, but rather the parent’s choice. Let’s think this through for a moment…. As...
PC Market Improvements in 2H ’15 Should Bode Reasonably Well for HDDs
By now, it is no surprise that the HDD market has suffered at the hands of very weak demand for PCs. Compounding the lack of consumer PC purchasing is a major transition in Windows OS, with Windows 10 releasing on July 29. No OEM in its right mind wants to blow out...
Do Technology Transitions Really Happen That Fast?
I tried to think back in the recent past to see when the storage industry made an immediate shift to a new interface or form factor, along with the reasons behind it. I was able to come up with one, very definite example – Parallel ATA (PATA) to Serial ATA (SATA) in...
Is Chromebook the New Netbook?
Many of the facets of Chromebook are similar to netbooks such as low price, slower CPU, and small storage capacity, but certain differentiating aspects make Chromebooks potentially more legitimate notebook substitutes compared to the netbooks of seven years ago. With...
The Next Step in Tablet Functionality May Be Emerging
In the five years since Apple’s original iPad was released, the tablet market has posted remarkable growth, followed by a subsequent split between high-end tablets typified by Apple’s offering and masses of low cost models from nearly every OEM and white box PC...
SAS SSDs Continue to Show Strength in an Ever Increasing Competitive Market
SAS Hard Disk Drives made their way to the market back in 2004. It has been 11 years and these storage devices have, and continue to see a healthy product life cycle. SAS HDDs are seen in multiple segments of the market, including Nearline, 10KRPM, and 15KRPM....
HDD Sales Drop, SSDs See Minor Growth: TRENDFOCUS CQ1 ‘15 Analysis
In early May, TRENDFOCUS released various quarterly reports, which reviews the HDD and SSD industries’ performance in CQ1 ’15, and what effect it has on the updated quarterly forecast. Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) saw a sharp decline to 125M units sold, mainly due to the...
Nearline HDD Disk-Per-Drive Ratio to Top 6 Disks by 2019, Aluminum Disk Substrate Shortage on the Horizon
Higher disk/drive counts in nearline HDDs combined with limited investment in aluminum disk substrate manufacturing have amplified tension on the industry supply chain. Key parts of the disk manufacturing process, specifically NP (nickel plate) and NPP (nickel plate...
Moore’s Law Turns 50 – Are There Parallels to Slowing HDD Areal Density Growth?
Much hoopla was recently published about Gordon Moore’s “law” turning 50 years old. An overly simplistic summary basically states that Moore's Law leads to a doubling of transistors on a microchip every 18 months (lengthened from an original estimate of 12 months)....
SSD price erosion continues to enable SSD attach rates
In our last blog post on this topic we highlighted the importance of the consumer notebook segment and its reliance on higher capacity points at the lowest possible price point, hence favoring hard disk drives. SSD prices have been on a free fall for the last six...