SSD sales expected to grow as industry switches to 3D NAND Flash

SSD shipments will continue to rise as the IT industry continues its adoption of 3D NAND Flash.

In the coming 12 months, research firm IDC expects the cost of SSDs to reduce considerably as NAND flash supply constraints diminish. This will lead to more manufacturers integrating SSDs into their devices - particularly PCs.

IDC thinks the worldwide SSD unit shipments to increase at a CAGR of 15% over the next five years, with adoption in the PC and consumer electronics devices market increase by a slightly higher 15.8% CAGR. In terms of what this means in monetary terms, IDC expects SSD-related revenues to reach $33.6 billion (£25.13 billion) in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 14.8%.

"SSDs continue on a path to become a more broadly used, ubiquitous storage technology across IT markets," said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president, Solid State Drives and Enabling Technologies.

"SSDs play an important role in making the digital transformation possible, a dynamic that IDC expects will continue to propel the adoption of SSDs and underpins the secular growth of the SSD market for both the client and enterprise segments."

IDC also thinks higher-capacity SSDs will become available at more competitive price points, meaning we'll start to see manufacturers upping the storage of notebook and desktop PCs as well as in detachable tablets or 2-in-1 tablets such as the Microsoft Surface.

The enterprise market will also benefit, with lower SSD prices on a per-gigabit basis for servers, network storage arrays (all-flash arrays and hybrid flash arrays), and hyperscale cloud service provider datacenters.