Prepares to wheel out solid-state drives.
Despite being heavily involved in its research, Seagate hasn’t been a strong supporter of helping along the young solid-state drive (SSD) market. At best, it has cautiously watched the growing interest, particularly in the mobile arena (which SSD looks set to overtake). This changes next year, however.
Understandably, it hasn’t much cared for working into its primary storage lineup a completely different medium. You could say the storage company is quite fond of the lucrative mechanical disks it currently circulates. Its hate for others proceeding with NAND-memory-based storage hasn’t necessarily been explicit, but the SSD angst often found its way out, like a dangling tampon string. Hard to miss and wished it’d just go away.
At first, Seagate wasn’t worried. Traditional hard drives were cheaper and more reliable. But SSD tech has picked up somewhat – and not just its own research in SSDs. Alarm bells sounding, Seagate figured it’d go all shifty-eyed and hinted at an ominous pile of patents it believed SSD manufacturers were infringing. Barely a month later, it sicked the lawyers on STEC, one of the more prominent players in SSDs.
And here we are today. Still chasing STEC through the courts, Seagate tells CNET it’s about ready to start selling its own SSDs alongside others such as Intel and Samsung, which already have a presence (and presumably also infringing certain patents). At first it’ll focus on the enterprise market, then us lowly consumers will see attention some time later, no doubt when the prices are more easily accessible.
Interestingly, Seagate tells CNET that it won’t go into producing NAND flash memory itself, choosing instead to source it.
Mechanical drives aren’t immediately doomed, but if all goes to plan, we are likely to see the solid-state drive replace its noisy ancestor in specific areas, especially in mobile devices thanks to incomparably lower power consumption.
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