Over the past few weeks, Samsung has been quickly
introducing new products in its SpinPoint product family. In early April, the
company announced new quiet SpinPoint S166 Series hard
disk drives (HDDs) for the desktop market. The company also introduced a new
speedy 7200RPM 200GB
2.5" HDD for the enterprise market.
The latest HDDs from Samsung are the new SpinPoint
N2 Series drives which feature capacities ranging from 30GB on up to 120GB.
Spindle speed is 4,200RPM and cache sizes range from 2MB to 8MB. The drives
will be aimed at ultra-portable notebooks, Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs)
and the portable audio player market -- in other words, be prepared for 120GB
iPods and Zunes around the corner.
Despite its vast resources when it comes to flash
technology, it's plain to see that the company isn't abandoning the 1.8"
HDD market. Storage rival Fujitsu, however, has decided to leave the
1.8" HDD market altogether and focus its energies on flash SSD.
Samsung also provided some market
analysis on 1.8" flash SSDs courtesy of DataQuest. Research shows that
1.8" SSDs are currently five times more expensive per gigabyte than
1.8" HDDs. The gap between the two will shrink slowly within the next few
years. By 2010, 1.8" SSDs will still be roughly three times more expensive
per gigabyte than 1.8" HDDs.
Despite the price differential, storage manufacturers and PC
OEMs are pushing forward with 1.8" and 2.5" SSDs. Dell just recently
announced that it would be making SanDisk's 32GB 1.8"
SSD available to Latitude D420 ($450 option) and Latitude D620 ATG users
($300 option). Dell is also making the drive available as a standalone option
for $549.
