Samsung is the clear leader in the SSD storage market according to new industry statistics published by IHS (via ZDNet). Last year 34 per cent of all SSDs sold were Samsung branded units. The South Korean electronics giant soundly beat second place Intel by generating twice the revenue from its SSD sales: it brought in $3.99 billion, compared to Intel's $1.99 billion SSD revenue.
SSD products made by Samsung are undoubtedly popular with HEXUS readers. Its consumer and Pro targeted drives have garnered good HEXUS reviews offering users an almost irresistible mix of good performance and competitive pricing.
The use of cutting edge technology in its products also helps with the popularity of the brand. At the end of 2014 Samsung brought out the first consumer 3D V-NAND SSD drives, which feature vertically stacked flash memory providing greater capacities without significant device size increase. At the beginning of this year it introduced M.2 form factor SSDs offering 30 per cent faster data transfers and 50 per cent better energy efficiency than the previous generation.
IHS has made some predictions about what lies ahead for the SSD industry, as you can see in the chart above (2015e and 2016e). The SSD market is expected to grow moderately over the next couple of years from $11.58 billion last year to $14.13 billion in 2016. Meanwhile the market shares of the top five players, Samsung, Intel, Sandisk, Micron and Toshiba, are predicted to hardly flinch.
Samsung's semiconductor business is widely considered to be on a roll, winning orders from many sides. For example Re/Code recently reported that Samsung's foundries will be put to work making Qualcomm's next high-end chip.
In another business thread its smartphone rollercoaster seemed to have crashed to a grinding halt during the year of the Samsung Galaxy S5. However recent reports are saying that Samsung expects the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones to be the "biggest-sellers in the Galaxy series ever". Sales of over 70 million units are looking likely after positive public responses, excellent pre-order numbers and gauging the first weeks of retail availability.
