X-bit labs

Fujitsu May Cancel Plans to Ultra-Portable HDDs in Favour of SSDs.

Category: Storage

by Anton Shilov

[ 04/12/2007 | 10:05 PM ]

Fujitsu, a large producer of chips and computers, has said that it had halted the plans to enter the market of 1.8” hard disk drives (HDDs), as flash-based storage solutions pose more interest for the company.

The Japanese electronics giant initially planned to enter the market of hard drives in 1.8” form-factor that are used in thin-and-lite notebooks as well as other kinds of portable devices in the  second or the third quarter of this year. But makers of various equipment are looking forward flash-based solid state drives as an alternative for traditional hard disk drives. As a result, it makes more sense for Fujitsu to enter the untapped market of SSDs, where the competition is not as strong as in the space of 1.8” HDDs.

“We want to see if the market tips toward flash, or if it stays with hard drives,” said Fujitsu spokesman Masao Sakamoto in an interview with Reuters news-agency.

Fujitsu produces 2.5” hard drives for normal-size notebooks, but there it has to compete against Samsung Electronics, Seagate Technology, Toshiba and Western Digital. The market of 1.8” HDDs is not that crowded with only Samsung and Toshiba offering hard drives in the form-factor. Nevertheless, the market of flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) is only emerging and there are more chances to become successful there eventually if to enter it soon enough.

Solid state drives are faster, more reliable and consume less power compared to conventional hard drives. But even though many companies in the storage business are talking about prospects of SSDs, the current costs of flash memory do not allow to create capacious solid state drives that would compete against traditional magnetic media in terms of price and thus market dominance.