Toshiba, second producer world of flash memory announced its intention to become the major player, maybe even largest, in the market of SSD disks. To achieve this, they will multiply by 15 their production in the two next years and will build a factory in the Philippines where these disks will be assembled.
They will be produced containing NAND flash memory engraved in 43 nm and will have capacities ranging between 64 and 512 GB. Already, the 256 GB SSD disc offered as an option for the MacBook Pro is made by Toshiba.
Alas, its performances are several notches lower compared to other recent products, with a data flow for reading of 100 MB/s whereas the standard is now around the 240 MB/s. Hopefully Toshiba will make progress here.
It seems in any case now that the market of the SSD will become mature in the two next years. There is little chance that the manufacturers continue to focus on the capacity, a disc of 1TB is only interesting to a few people. On the other hand, the next battle front will be on the prices once everyone will has similar products in size and performances.
Hitachi agreed to plead guilty in the gigantic scandal that burst open in the United States, where the majority of LCD screen manufacturers were recognized guilty of price fixing of LCD screens in order to preserve their margins.
To put an end to the procedure, Hitachi agreed to pay a fine of 31 million dollars. The losers of this business are, the manufacturers of portables and in the final analysis the consumers who overpaid during years for these screens, the money now goes to the American government.
