by Anton Shilov
07/18/2006 | 01:44 AM
As the market of digital equipment grows, different storage technologies are required for different types of applications. Modern digital music players utilize flash memory and very low-end computers for developing markets will also use flash instead of hard disk drives (HDDs), as flash has higher reliability while its price has lowered to acceptable levels. Nevertheless, HDDs will remain the primary storage technology through 2015, according to a report from IDC.
<%BANNER[article]%>The market tracking agency notes that cuccessful IT and consumer-based digital device designs will place greater demands on digital storage to achieve further capacity increases at lower prices – with rising expectations for greater robustness, security, and reliability. This surge in storage requirements has given rise to new storage technologies looking to challenge the long-standing technologies used in a multitude of today’s applications.
The criteria for a given storage technology’s success will vary with each application, and no one storage technology can possibly meet all storage application requirements, according to a new IDC special report. Despite challenges from competing storage technologies, IDC expects hard disk drives (HDDs) will continue to lead in density and price through 2015.
“Reports of the HDD’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Mapping out technology and usage roadmaps through 2015 reveals clear strengths for some storage technologies and potential battle grounds between others. Winning storage technologies will offer the best balance of all requirements put forth by the computing device and its user in terms of cost, capacity, performance, environmental friendliness, and most importantly, ease of use,” said John Rydning, IDC’s research manager for hard disk drives & components.