Seagate to Serve up SSDs in 2009

By Greg McNevin

October 14, 2008: Seagate has announced that it is diving headlong into the solid state disk (SSD) market, first concentrating on enterprise customers and then moving further down the chain to consumers.

The company will begin shipping SSDs in 2009, and is optimistic about its ability to deliver the new technology due to its expertise with error correction.

While the company says that it will initially be taking it slow with SSDs, it says that eventually they may replace magnetic drives as its primary focus – at least when the market is convinced of the technology’s reliability and life expectancy.

“Our history is based on rotating magnetic media. But as solid-state comes online, we're embracing this new media type,” Rich Vignes, the Senior Manager of Market Development at Seagate told CNET.

One of the world’s biggest hard drive companies getting into the SSD business is a good thing for consumers, however, the company does face some stiff competition in a marketplace already pretty much tied up by the likes of Intel, SanDisk and Samsung. Particularly considering Seagate will have to buy its NAND chips from of its competitors.

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