MarketsandMarkets forecasts the solid state drives market to grow from USD 26.5 billion in 2018 to USD 60.2 million by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.7% during the forecast period. Some of the key factors driving this market are increasing penetration of high-end cloud computing, growing adoption of SSDs in data centers, and advantages of SSDs over HDDs. The objective of the report is to define, describe, and forecast the solid state drives market size based on by interface, form factor, technology, storage, end-user, and region.

Helped leading solid-state drive providers to target opportunities worth ~USD 400 million in the US Client�s Problem Statement Leading solid-state drive providers were considering developing versions of its products, in form factors that are typically associated with SSDs, specifically the form factors that use PCI Express and SATA interfaces. Therefore, the client wanted to get an understanding of the adoption of various form factors. MnM Approach The client engaged MnM to provide insights on various data points.

� Finer-grade break down of form factors such as 1.8�/2.5�, 3.5�, M.2, U.2 (SFF 8639), FHHL and HHHL

� Analysis of each of the form-factor for adoption across SATA, SAS and PCIe interfaces

� Recommendations for high adoption form factor within the PCIe and SATA interface Revenue Impact (RI) This has helped the client to target opportunities worth ~USD 400 million in the US Consult our Analyst now

The market for SATA interface�based solid state drive accounted for the largest market in 2016

The large market of SATA interface solid state drive is mainly attributed to low-cost interface design. SATA interface also offers lower cable size and cost, faster data transfer through higher signaling rates, and more efficient transfer through an I/O queuing protocol, lower cable size and cost, faster data transfer through higher signaling rates, and more efficient transfer through an I/O queuing protocol.

The market for half height, half length (HHHL); or; even bigger form factor; full height, half length (FHHL) is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period

These form factors offer high performance as PCIe bus (with direct contact) offers a very low latency.

The solid state drives market for TLC Planar held the largest market in 2016

With the shift in the usage of technology from SLC to MLC and from MLC to TLC, the price per GB of SSDs becomes cheaper. Therefore, TLC offers the cheapest solutions among all other technologies, along with high storage density. This leads to the increasing adoption of TLC SSDs in consumer applications such as notebooks, tablets, and others

The solid state drives market in automotive is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period

The increasing demand for automotive infotainment systems and next-generation connected cars is expected to boost the growth of the solid state drives market, as connected car applications require high-performance graphics, communications, and data storage, and SSDs meet all of these requirements. SSD is a flash storage solution that enables reliable, high-performance storage in a wide range of in-vehicle applications such as 3D mapping and advanced augmented reality in navigation systems, entertainment systems, intuitive driver-assist technology, and data event recorders.

North America acquired the largest market for solid state drive in 2016

Leading companies in North America are providing most developed SSDs as advanced storage solutions to various industries. Enterprises in America are increasing their spending on IT infrastructure to gain a competitive edge and increase their business productivity. Therefore, there has been a strong push for using SSDs in IT infrastructure devices to save time, speed up data transfer, and achieve high-performance level. In addition, the replacement rate of traditional hard disk drives with SSDs is high in North America.

Market Dynamics

Increasing penetration of high-end cloud computing

Cloud computing is becoming one of the preferred options for enterprises and consumers to back up and archive their data. The demand for SSDs has been rapidly increasing with the emerging number of cloud platforms�from the traditional corporate private and new public clouds to personal clouds in homes.

Technical advancements in the solid state storage have given rise to SSDs with new interfaces such as PCIe, NVMe, and others. Improved features such as high speed and quick data access encourage the adoption of PCIe SSDs for cloud computing.

New PCIe SSDs offer high performance with high frequency and reduced latency. A solid state drive with these features is required for various complex operations in data-sensitive industries such as financial services, life sciences, and energy management, where each microsecond of latency causes a huge loss in revenues.

Several major players manage their cloud platforms and address the growing customers� demand for SSDs. For instance, Google (US) uses persistent SSD storage in open beta for compute engine users, providing high-input/output operations per second (IOPS) and allows google cloud platform users access SSDs faster on workloads. These operations provide faster input/output (I/O) delivery and are less redundant compared to the traditional magnetic media. Facebook Inc. (US) uses PCIe flash cards for its MySQL databases instead of HDD to take the advantage of FusionIO's logging system, which protects data in case of power failure. This has helped in decreasing latency by 50% and increasing throughput by 33% compared to the equivalent HDD storage. The use of SSDs helps in reducing infrastructure cost and improving response time. SSDs also offer much more inputs and outputs (I/Os) for mega-clouds and virtualized servers.

According to global cloud index, data center traffic has shown increasing requirements for data storage. The high-traffic data center would further drive the demand for SSDs owing to their high density and high-performance features.

Restraint: High cost and smaller life span of SSDs

The price of 1 GB of an SSD is higher than that of an HDD. For instance, 1 TB internal HDD costs around USD 0.07 per GB, whereas an SSD of the same capacity costs around USD 0.30 per GB. Recently, there has been a dramatic reduction in the price of NAND flash memory; even then the price of SSDs is more than HDDs. However, this trend may not continue in the future with the introduction of 3D NAND storage solutions. 3D NAND has become a game changer for the storage industry because of the increasing SSD capacities and dropping SSD prices. 3D NAND would allow SSDs to increase capacities well beyond the size of hard drives. Also, the lifespan of SSD is less than HDD; SSD has a limited write cycle as the flash memories in SSDs can be used for a definite number of writes. This is also one of the parameters associated with the cost of storage infrastructure using SSDs.

Opportunity: Relational analytics using smart SSDs

Relational analytics deals with data processing and code execution techniques. Smart SSDs are flash storage devices that consist of memory and computing resources for relational analytic query processing. The performance of relational analytics will be improved for widely distributed data using the computation functionality in SSDs itself. This reduces the processing power required in the host machine or increases the effective computing power of servers or appliances.

Instead of the traditional processors, smart SSD use its own processor, which is of high efficiency from the overall price/performance perspective ($/MHz ratio). So, integrating data processing in smart SSDs can reduce the energy consumption of the overall database server/appliance. This will eventually reduce the total cost of operating the database system. Also, in relational databases, metadata can be placed in SSDs as cache. This will help accelerate databases with high magnitude when it comes to queries, sorts, and calculations.

So, smart SSDs eventually provide an opportunity to commoditize a new style of data processing. At the same time, hardware and software vendors have to collaborate to explore this opportunity.

Challenge: Design complexity

Solid state drives are gaining popularity among people; at the same time, the increasing demand comes with high expectations for a variety of features and functionalities. To meet the expectations, manufacturers in this solid state storage industry are facing a challenge in terms of design considerations.

Challenges pertaining to SSD design are associated with different parameters such as performance, reliability, endurance, security, and flexibility. To get the desired performance, the host interface and the flash interface require a careful coordination, which sometimes needs the use of parallelism for multiple die programming. Managing temperature is another critical criterion while regulating performance and write speed. Also, the controllers needed to be designed according to the different characteristics of flash memories, which are used to manufacture SSDs. Every flash memory differs regarding page/block size, spare area, response time, and other factors.

With the increasing adoption of SSDs, security is becoming a major concern. Ideally, hardware-based encryption is preferred over software-based encryption as software encryption is more vulnerable to crashes. At the same time, the improper designing of hardware-based encryption may hinder the overall performance. Advanced SSD controllers coordinate with various encryption standards such as ATA, TCG�s Opal/Enterprise, IEEE 1667, and others to improve the design. Therefore, overcoming design problems of SSDs is a challenge for the solid state drives market.

Scope of the Report

Report Metric Details Market size available for years 2015-2023 Base year considered 2016 Forecast period 2017-2023 Forecast units Value (USD) in million Segments covered Interface, form factor, technology, storage, end-user, and region Geographies covered North America, APAC, Europe, and RoW Companies covered Samsung (South Korea), Intel (US), Western Digital (US), Micron (US), Toshiba (Japan), Kingston (US), Lite-On (Taiwan), Seagate (Ireland), SK hynix (South Korea), Microsemi (US), Viking (US), Adata (Taiwan), Bitmicro Networks (US), Mushkin (US), NetApp (US), Lexar Media (US), Crossbar (US), G.Skill (Taiwan), Violin Memory (US), Corsair Components (US).

This research report categorizes the solid state drives market based on interface, form factor, technology, storage, end-user, and region.

Solid State Drives Market, by interface

SATA

SAS

PCIe

Solid State Drives Market, by Form Factor

1.8�/2.5�

3.5�

M.2

U.2 (SFF 8639)

FHHL and HHHL

Solid State Drives Market, by Technology

SLC

MLC Planar

MLC 3D

TLC Planar

TLC 3D

Solid State Drives Market, by Storage:

Under 500 GB

500 GB�1 TB

1 TB � 2 TB

Above 2 TB

Solid State Drives Market, by End-User:

Enterprise

Client

Industrial

Automotive

By Geography

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific (APAC)

Rest of the World (RoW)

Key Market Players:

Key players in the solid state drives market include Samsung (South Korea), Intel (US), Western Digital (US), Micron (US), Toshiba (Japan), Kingston (US), Lite-On (Taiwan), Seagate (Ireland), SK hynix (South Korea), Microsemi (US), Viking (US), Adata (Taiwan), Bitmicro Networks (US), Mushkin (US), NetApp (US), Lexar Media (US), Crossbar (US), G.Skill (Taiwan), Violin Memory (US), Corsair Components (US).

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea) has been at the top position because of its wide contribution to the parent market share and high financial power. The company accounted for a share of around 38.87% of the solid state drive market in 2016. The company has a strong technical expertise and a broad product portfolio in the solid state drives market. The company is one of the leading global brands in the storage industry and has a wide geographic reach through various distribution networks. The company�s innovative offering, V-NAND, improves the latency in its SSD products. The Charge Trap Flash (CTF) technology prevents data corruption caused by cell-to-cell interference and also leads to improved speed, power efficiency, and endurance.

Recent Developments:

In May 2018, Western Digital launched 3D NAND SATA SSD with 64-layer 3D NAND technology for high capacity and reduced cell�cell interference for enhanced reliability.

In August 2017, Samsung launched Portable SSD T5, the latest 64-layer V-NAND technology, which delivers industry-leading transfer speed with encrypted data security.

In August 2017, Micron expanded its manufacturing facility in Boise, Idaho, US. The investment in R&D is dedicated toward developing new semiconductor manufacturing processes and designs for the company's future memory and storage technologies.

Critical questions the report answers:

Where will all the developments take the industry in the mid to long term?

What are the emerging applications that are expected to drive the solid state drives market?

What are the key strategies adopted by leading companies in the solid state drives market?

What are the trends prevalent in the solid state drives market?

What advanced technologies are expected to gain traction in the solid state drives market?

To speak to our analyst for a discussion on the above findings, click Speak to Analyst