Why is SSD Memory So Expensive?

[insinuendo]

Back when CRT TVs were being phased out and LCD and Plasmas were transitioning in, the latter were a lot more expensive. Obviously this is due to the new technology being more expensive to produce than the tech they've been making for years and the mark up for the desirability of new devices.

Now CRTs are essentially extinct and huge flat screen TVs are expentionally cheaper and larger compared to their CRT counter parts from 20 years ago.

This is in part due to refinement of production and the cost to ship and construct these devices has plummeted, passing the savings on to the consumer. Will we see the same with storage? Will traditional hard drives big a thing of the past within 20 years? Will we be seeing 7tb SSD drives for 50 dollars or are they inherently expensive devices to produce?

 

[das_stig]

Shortage of flash, but more plants coming on line and prices are slowly dropping, now that they are also starting to produce larger size drives, HDD days are numbered, even for companies that need long term cold storage that flash cannot do due to leakage, the future is cloud for mass offline storage as they can build out huge storage arrays at a fraction of the price that a normal company can do.

 

[Kasper Jorgensen]

In time probably, but for now the price of the chips used inside a SSD is somewhat high as the demand is very high. Just think about how many people are switching over to SSD, how many smartphones with more and more memory installed are being sold, datacenters are slowly moving towards SSD as well, other electronic devices using it as well.