Fact of Life
With its 850 Evo 3D V-NAND flash SSD finally being mass produced, Samsung Electronics is dominating the solid state drive (SSD) market. Since there is a considerable gap in technology with competitors, Samsung Electronics is expected to hold a dominant position in the high-end market, including servers and ultrabooks, for a while.
According to sources in the industry and foreign press, Apple has exclusively mounted Samsung Electronics’ SSDs in the newly-released 12-inch MacBook. In contrast, Samsung Electronics’ competitors, SanDisk and Toshiba, failed to utilize their SSDs, since they failed to ease the concerns about their 3D NAND flash in the market in comparison with Samsung.
This SSD has a usable capacity of 256GB to 512GB, weighing less than 1kg. Generally, manufacturing firms don’t depend on only one company for parts. However, in an unprecedented move, Apple exclusively used Samsung's parts in this model. This is mostly because there is a significant gap in performance between Samsung Electronics and its competitors.
Even though the competitors, including Toshiba and Micron, are preparing to mass produce 36-layer 3D NAND flash, Samsung Electronics is the only company in the industry that is already mass-producing the 32-layer triple-level cell (TLC) 3D V-NAND flash SSD. It is said that Samsung Electronics will mass produce 48-layer 3D products in the second half of this year.
Currently, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba are the only companies focusing on mass producing TLC products. Last year, Samsung Electronics announced its strategy to mount the TLC V-NAND on all SSDs released this year. However, it is said that its competitor, Micron, is struggling to mass produce the TLC NAND flash, which is supposed to be supplied to Intel SSDs. Therefore, it seems that it will take some time for the company to compete with Samsung Electronics.
Accordingly, the market position of Samsung Electronics will be strengthened further. According to the market research firm IC Insights in 4Q last year, Samsung’s share in the SSD market was increased from 32 percent in 2013 to 34 percent in 2014. The figure is expected to increase to 36 percent this year.