SSDs – Growing on a Solid Turf in India

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SSDs (Solid State Drives) are the next big thing in the memory world, because they are faster, quieter, not susceptible to shock, low power consuming and have less accessibility time with higher productivity and reliability, compared to HDDs (Hard Disk Drives). 

The way NAND Flash SSDs Work: SSDs store information in memory cell arrays embedded on a circuit board. The memory cells are essentially transistors with floating gates. Each transistor has two gates: one is a source that admits a current and the other is the drain that expels it. The memory cells act as switches to control the energy flow between the source and the drain terminals. Semiconductors called floating-gate (FG) transistors transfer electrical charges to the memory cells, whether connected to an external power source or not (over time a powered-off SSD will leak energy). As long as there is sufficient charge from the FG, the data retains integrity. Memory cells may house one or more bits per cell. In a single-level cell (SLC), the control gate (CG) will sense if a floating gate is charged with electrons or not. In response, the control gate will record either 0 or 1 byte. Multi-level cells (MLC) work in a similar way. The SSD not only houses the interconnected memory cells and circuit boards, but also adds a layer of intelligence with the flash controller.

According to CMR’s India Hard Drive Market Review for H1 CY2020, the India Consumer Internal SSD market (SATA & PCIe) shipments recorded 6% YoY growth in H1 2020. 

How the SSD market is Evolving in India!

We took the opinions of some of the world’s leading memory brands on the latest and projected future trends in the SSD segment in India.

Sachin Sharma, Country Manager – India at ADATA Technology (India) Pvt Ltd, “Modern PC storage is rapidly shifting from traditional HDD technology to SSDs. Compared to their traditional HDD counterparts, the SSDs are gaining considerable attention due to their performance benefits. India’s storage device market has been predominantly driven by demand for primary storage. Though the SSD market in India is presently at a growing stage, due to price constraints the major demand is derived mainly from the enterprise application segment at present.” 

Khalid Wani, Director – Sales, India, Western Digital (WD), “Basis of the latest report by CMR, both internal as well as external SSD markets have witnessed an exponential growth when compared to CY2018. Various factors such as the growing Internet penetration, increasing awareness of the latest technologies, WFH and LFH trends and need for higher productivity are the key drivers behind the growth in demand for SSDs.” 

Nitin Malhotra, Business Head – Intelligent Storage, Prama HIKVISION India Pvt Ltd, “The potential to enhance the performance battery life of PCs & laptops with quiet & low power consuming SSDs, along with faster OS, make SSDs a preferred choice over traditional HDDs. High speed with low latency and multitasking with better reliability of SSDs is catalyzing their growth globally. India’s adoption rate is much higher as compared to its peers and I would attribute it to the attention it is getting by almost all major and third party brands that want to grab a share of new and upgrade markets. Growth rate of SSDs on an annualized basis in India is greater than 50% at present and like any technology trend, this too will continue to grow phenomenally in the initial years till it attains maturity.”

Tejashwar Singh, India Sales Head, Kingston Technology, “India is one of the leading data consuming countries and that speaks volumes about the potential that this market offers. This trend increased manifold since the pandemic started as people are now working and students are taking classes from homes and spending more time on their PCs for gaming. From working professionals to students, everyone is hugely dependent on technology, which in turn is resulting in massive usage of data. Working professionals are looking for a compelling PCs for their daily usage and even the students are looking for upgrades in order to have uninterrupted sessions for their online educational classes. Most of the consumers are vying for budget-friendly and effective solutions to improve the performance of their computers. Replacing the hard disk drives (HDDs) with a solid-state drives (SSDs) is one of the easiest and quickest ways to enhance the PC performance to the next level. Managing and storing data today is redefining the way we work and play today. Riding on this trend, Kingston is the most preferred brand in the Indian market and well poised in the market due to extensive SSD product portfolio and aggressive pricing. The company enjoys 65% YoY growth in the segment while the SSD category in India grew at over 50%. Some of our products like Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD, Kingston KC600 2.5 SSD, etc have seen a tremendous acceptance amongst the consumers in past few months.” 

Ajay Kogta, Country Manager, SSD (BU), URdistree (Distributor of HP), “With the increasing awareness about the better performance of SSDs, more and more customers are upgrading their computers to SSDs. Growth of SSDs in last two years is over 50%.”

Rajesh Gupta, Director Sales, Micron India, “The SSD segment continues to evolve and grow in India. According to a recent CMR report, the India Consumer Internal SSD market (SATA & PCIe) shipments recorded 6% YoY growth in H1 2020 and expected to grow by 15-20% in H2 2020. Extended WFH (Work From Home) in the new normal requires smoother and faster PC performance. For them, upgrading their existing laptops and desktops, replacing an existing slow HDD with an internal SSD is a better option and SSDs and DRAM are the two key options to enhance the performance of their systems. The WFH, online educational classes, OTT downloads, digitization are key drivers for internal SSD market growth.”

Sanjay Kumar, Country Manager, OSCOO,“SSDs are taking over the space of HDDs due to  rapid rise in next gen connected  devices, growing premium & high end PC market, need for  higher performance  & capacity  storage devices,  increasing IT  spending, growing number of data centers and the need to upgrade. Currently, the Indian  SSD  market  is  driven predominantly by the growing demand for high-end  computing  systems by the  enterprise  segment, growing  number  of  data  centres, increasing penetration of on-premises  storage  systems , coupled  with   proliferation  of big  data  &  cloud  computing market.”

Manoj Gupta, Managing Director, Fortune Marketing Private Limited (Distributor of PNY),  “Over the last three years, storage device market recorded high growth in India, predominantly driven by the demand for primary storage like DDR4 RAM, secondary storage like portable HDDs, microSD cards, flash USBs, and now the SSDs. SSD market in India is presently at a growing stage with major demand being derived from enterprise application segment. For client SSD applications, consumers primarily prefer low cost SSDs with 120-256GB capacity. Presently, Multi-Level Cell (MLC) SSD segment acquired major share in the overall SSD market of India, followed by Single-Level Cell (SLC), and Triple-Level Cell (TLC) segments.” 

The Leading Market and Technology Trends in the SSD Space

As per the CMR report – WDC and Kingston together contributed 69% to the overall market. SATA 2.5” Internal SSD was the major contributor and 240 GB is the most favored capacity segment. India Internal SSD (SATA & PCIe) market shipments stood at 0.3 Mn and recorded a remarkable sequential growth in 2Q CY2019, according to CMR’s India Hard Drive Market Review for 2Q CY2019. In the overall India Consumer Internal SSD market, WDC ruled the market and contributed 36% market share in terms of units shipped. Remarkable growth was seen in shipments from Kingston, which has replaced Samsung to be on the second spot. With its strong marketing strategy and extremely competitive price, Kingston plans to make it big in the internal SSD segment. 

Interface and Capacity Trends: SATA interface contributed 96% to the overall market, followed by PCIe capturing 4% market share. Both the interfaces recorded significant 39% and 50% sequential growth in terms of unit shipments. 240 GB was the major contributor with 49% market share in the overall market followed by 120 GB contributing 31% in terms of unit shipments.

Ajay Kogta of URdistree (Distributor of HP), “With increasing demand for performance, NVMe demand is growing much faster and set to overtake 2.5 inch SATA and M.2 segment in the near future.”

Nitin Malhotra of Hikvision, “The driving force behind increasing adoption of SSD is the increasing adoption of the advanced technologies such as cloud computing, Big Data, AI and edge computing. SSDs help data intensive applications access and process data much faster as compared to the traditional HDDs. SSDs are designed and optimized to handle critical workloads.  Accelerating technology advancements will help SSDs to soon crossover the critical curve of cost per GB resulting in higher attach rates over time and making them a preferred choice for consumers.”

Tejashwar Singh of Kingston, “SSDs over the years have seen an overwhelming attention of the consumers in the recent years. With the solid foundation of SSDs in Indian market, now consumers want to explore more. Today, NVMes (non-volatile memory express) SSDs have become the newest tech promising faster speeds. It is a new storage access and transport protocol for flash and next-generation SSDs that delivers the highest and fastest speed for all types of workloads. It ensures faster speed almost four times as normal SSDs.With boosted internal speeds, this brings a better overall computing experience for multi-taskers and resource-heavy application users who want a fast and responsive system to tackle tough workloads. One NVMe SSD which is doing great in the Indian market is Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD. It is meant for content designers, programmers as it has 3x the performance of a SATA SSD with quicker loading time and has a boasting read/write speed of up to 2,200/2,000MB/s.Now people can do a lot more with their PC which just this minor upgrade. To add to all this, Kingston A2000 is a self-encrypting drive that supports end-to-end data protection using XTS-AES 256 bit and allows the usage of independent software vendors with TCG Opal 2.0 security management solutions.”

Sachin Sharma of ADATA, “Gen 4, Vertical NAND (V-NAND), Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe), and PCI Express (PCIe) SSDs are the latest technology trends in the SSD space.”

Rajesh Gupta of Micron India, “The 2.5 inch SATA has been the dominant interface for SSDs and recently SSDs with PCIe/NVMe interface are growing rapidly in demand. We see consumers transitioning to M.2 SSDs even in the entry segment. In the high-end segment, NVMe SSDs are gaining prominence. Micron is bringing further innovations by launching SSDs with innovative QLC NAND.”

Sanjay Kumar, Country Manager, OSCOO, “The 3D NANd flash & NVMe communication protocol are the latest technologies.”

Manoj Gupta of Fortune Marketing (Distributor of PNY), “SATA (2.5” and M.2) SSDs captured 94% of the overall market. SATA SSD shipments increased by 3% YoY and PCIe NVMe SSDs grew by a remarkable 81% when compared with H1 CY2019. The 240GB internal SSD is the most favored capturing 45% market share followed by 120 GB at 26%. The 480 GB and 500 GB capacity shipments increased by 67% and 55% YoY, respectively. The 500 GB External SSD shipments captured 59% market share followed by 1 TB at 28% and 2 TB capturing 7%. The 1TB and 2TB capacity shipments increased by 226% and 673% YoY.”

HDDs vs  SSDs – Price and Performance!

The demand for SSD: Flash is a driving force behind the rapid growth of enterprise data storage, and SSDs are the most popular media for NAND flash.

NAND is not limited to SSD media: The memory cell architecture resides on circuit boards, which may be housed in SSDs or embedded directly into a server or other devices. Still, the majority of NAND flash is delivered via SSDs in storage arrays, which comprise the core of enterprise nonvolatile flash memory storage.

Flash and SSD are not necessarily interchangeable terms: NAND flash memory is a type of nonvolatile storage, where silicon memory chips persistently store data with or without an external power source. And SSDs are not limited to NAND flash, but also house memory technologies like volatile DRAM.

When it comes to the data centers, SSDs are an answer to enterprise workloads whose performance suffered with disk-based storage arrays and server storage subsystems. With the growth of hybrid and all-flash arrays, SSD storage serves intensive workloads with very high I/O performance. SSDs have the added advantage of low energy usage, which helps data centers to keep the energy budget items under control. The SSDs have the same external form factors as HDDs, because they are marketed as replacements for HDDs. Using the same form factors does not require massive re-engineering of storage arrays at the factory or data center levels. Next, since SSDs have no moving parts, they run considerably more quietly, enjoy faster access time, and lower power consumption over HDDs.  The most special feature of SSDs is their sequential read-and-write speed making them much faster than the conventional HDDs. Such impressive features result in the extended battery life for PCs, tablets and laptops making them a popular option among consumers.

SSDs also add up extra memory to the PCs and laptops having low embedded storage and speed up their operating system. Cost-effectiveness due to rise in demand and mass production have also added up to increasing SSD adoption rate.

Sachin Sharma of ADATA, “Presently, SSD prices are still on the higher side compared to HDDs. In future, with the price gap likely to decrease, SSD market share is set to take over HDD market share. SSDs are faster, silent, and more reliable; SSDs have no moving parts; reading and writing is much better; SSDs access data electronically whereas HDDs access electromechanically. All these factors make SSDs a better option.”

Rajesh Gupta of Micron India, “With SSDs beating HDDs in almost all key performance parameters, the HDDs are becoming the technology of the past. Even the simplest SSDs outperform the HDDs by over 100 times in terms of IOPS. The SSDs consuming one-third power compared to HDDs and so give longer battery life; SSDs weigh much less and thus help to develop sleeker laptops which are easy to carry; SSDs (with no moving parts) are much quieter, shock resistant and more reliable than HDDs. Annual failure ratio of SSDs is one tenth or less than that for HDDs in general. Micron is one of the industry leaders in the SSD category and has recently given consumers two new reasons to choose SSDs over HDDs; the 2210 QLC SSD and the 2300 SSD. Our 2210 QLC SSD, targeted at the ‘value market,’ has flash capabilities but comes at the HDD-like price points. This is designed to handle the most data-intensive needs, with up to 2 TB of capacity available. Micron’s 2300 SSD is aimed at the mainstream consumers. It is designed for compute-heavy applications but isn’t a power guzzler, so notebook users won’t have to worry about recharging as often. Consumers may continue to expect more such innovations in capabilities and performance at decreasing price-points in near future.”

Nitin Malhotra of Hikvision, “The driving force behind increasing adoption of SSD is the increasing adoption of the advanced technologies such as cloud computing, Big Data, AI and edge computing. SSDs help data intensive applications access and process data much faster as compared to the traditional HDDs. SSDs are designed and optimized to handle critical workloads.  Accelerating technology advancements will help SSDs to soon crossover the critical curve of cost per GB resulting in higher attach rates over time and making them a preferred choice for consumers.”

Tejashwar Singh of Kingston, “In India, consumers’ understanding of the innovation and the uptake of SSDs have made immense progress. Compared to HDDs, SSDs offer imperative advantages like higher speed, high information security, better strength, higher portability, better reliability and a steady framework. An SSD has no moving parts, so it is more likely to keep the data safe in the event one drops their laptop bag or the system gets shaken while it’s operating. Most HDDs park their read/write heads when the system is off, but when they are working, the heads are flying over the drive platter at a distance of a few nanometers. Besides, even parking brakes have limits. If one is rough on their equipment, an SSD is recommended. It is because of this steadfast reliability, the consumers are embracing this technology without any reluctance. They now understand that SSDs are pivotal to manage their data and storage requirements. Soon, SSDs will become an industry standard as thye will surpass the capacity limits and augment durability in a big way. It is interesting to note that SSDs are 10 times faster than HDDs and not just this: an NVMe SSD is 35 times faster than HDDs. To cater to our customers across price points, Kingston has a complete range of SSDs right from entry-level SSDs made for upgrade, to mid-level SSDs for power-up users, to high-end SSDs for extreme gamers.”

Ajay Kogta of URdistree (Distributor of HP), “Performance of SSDs is far superior to that of HDDs, though HDDs are still cheaper than SSDs. In current scenario, the customer preference is more towards performance and the demand for SSDs is set to grow.”
 
Sanjay Kumar of OSCOO, “While the prices of SSDs have been dropping, they are still costlier compared to HDDs. However, this difference will contract further in the coming months due to new NAND technology.”

Mehul Kagalwala, Country Director – India, Silicon Power, “SSDs are now gradually replacing the traditional HDDs because SSDs have certain advantages like higher data transfer speeds and greater reliability compared to HDDs. Globally, Silicon Power is a strong player in SSD space. We will leverage the brand image we have in the global markets.” 

Security and Data Recovery Associated with SSDs 

Sachin Sharma of ADATA, “Some customers do consider that data recovery could be a problem with SSDs so they still prefer to use HDDs. But we advise that customers should always keep their important data in more than one device because anything can happen to either SSDs or HDDs.” 

Rajesh Gupta of Micron India, “The operating systems that support TRIM feature (e.g. Win 10) automatically zero out the empty cells from which the data has been deleted by the user/application. This makes data recovery much harder in SSDs as compared to HDDs wherein the data remains there even after deletion by user/app till it is overwritten. That is also an advantage for using SSDs, as there is a higher risk of data being recovered by unauthorized persons when HDDs discarded. Furthermore, SSDs can implement hardware-based encryption with no performance loss.”

Nitin Malhotra of Hikvision, “Though SSDs are susceptible to memory deterioration and physical faults, they are durable and less prone to mechanical failure. Since SSD do not have any moving parts and they tend to come with fewer manufacturing defects and age better. Hikvision SSDs come with Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) that warns users of potential failure and prompts them to take preventive measures.”

Ajay Kogta of URdistree (Distributor of HP), “Unlike HDD there is no moving part in SSD, so the chances of data corruption are very low. Customer are willing to shift from HDDs to SSDs, due to the high performance of SSDs.”

Sanjay Kumar of, “Because  SSDs  have  no  mechanical  parts, they are less  likely to  suffer mechanical  failures. And  SSDs last  longer and perform  better over an  extended period.” 

How SSDs are doing in the gaming segment?

Sachin Sharma of ADATA, “In the gaming speed and power consumption matter a lot. Hence, speed, low power consumption quiet operation of the SSDs makes them the most preferred devices in the gaming segment.”

Rajesh Gupta of Micron India, “Gaming industry definitely benefits from the superior performance and low thermal specifications of SSDs and transition is visible. Considering the colossal install sizes of the modern games, the SSDs are evolving as essential devices in the gaming space. With the advent of the next-gen consoles and games that need very high speeds, the SSD-based storage has become a necessity. The new normal of working/studying from home has given a huge push to online gaming as people have more spare time to play esports. This trend has also prompted consumers to upgrade their storage to SSDs.”

Nitin Malhotra of Hikvision, “In the recent past SSD’s have become mainstream especially when it comes to gamers. SSDs prowess lies in faster data access hence any situation in a gaming experience that involves accessing data from the storage on to the computer will be faster, with SSDs any game will boot faster.”

Tejashwar Singh of Kingston, “While gaming traffic is on the rise in the last couple of years, the downside to this situation is that gaming systems are generally data starved. Moreover, gamers today are looking at immersive experiences, and hence the game developers are highly dependent on technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, AR/VR and more. This demands that the gaming experience should be compelling for the gamers but this has resulted in making the games heavier. Games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Destiny 2, and Modern Warfare are taking up well over 150 GB each which implies that it needs a lot of storage space. Hence, to make room for the new games, the gamers have to delete the old games, which is an agonizing decision for them. Moreover, it is remarkable that NVMe SSDs enable games to boot up two to three times faster than those installed on a traditional hard drive. With SSDs, the games will not only load faster, there will be hardly any time wasted on loading screens from the game’s menu to the game itself. Gamers will also notice how much faster their games load compared to other players’ when playing online. Gaming is all about speed and adrenalin rush, so NVMe SSDs truly help enhance the experience and make it limitless. Additionally, installation times are also significantly reduced. SSDs in general can’t make downloading games any faster but they do install and store them in your storage system quickly and efficiently, especially when using a NVMe SSD. Even if one is not playing, they will still benefit from NVMe SSDs, whether they are loading their operating system, transferring files or opening other applications. This is perfect if one is planning on streaming their gaming experience and creating content. An NVMe SSD will benefit one’s games, streaming and video production software, as well as the footage and images they will need to create. Therefore, to ramp up the gaming experience and support these enhancements, gamers are vying for an upgrade to NVMe SSDs. Therefore, all the professional gamers are queuing up for NVMe SSDs like A2000 for its unmatched value, and the KC2500 SSD for its extremely efficient performance. This year, we have seen explosive growth and robust demand for the NVMe SSDs and our Q3 2020 monthly average increase is about 7X. The A2000 SSD can attain read/write speeds over 2200/2000 MB/s and is ideal for ultra-books and small form factors. At the same time, the KC2500 SSD can reach input/output speeds over 3500/2900 MB/s using the latest Gen 3.0 x 4 controller, which could transport the gamer to an altogether new level of gaming. Both these NVMe SSDs are available at incredibly attractive price options and have undoubtedly provided a shot in the arm to the Indian gamer to up his performance by several notches.”  

Ajay Kogta of URdistree (Distributor of HP), “In gaming speed and performance are the first priority. Hence, the SSDs are the best suit for the gaming segment.”

Khalid Wani of WD, “With gaming gaining popularity amongst the youth, having a fast and smooth-running PC with large storage capacity is essential. An NVMe based SSD leverages the PCIe interface and delivers a significant performance boost thus ticks all boxes, giving gamers an immersive experience. As a result, gamers and consumers can experience a holistic performance of their PCs. Today most PCs are designed with NVMe slots, hence a slow but gradual change in the adoption of SSDs and SSDs powered with NVMe technology is also visible.” 

GTM and Channel Strategies of SSD Brands

Sachin Sharma of ADATA, “In India, SSD is still a new technology with which many people are not yet familiar. We educate our partners by giving technical specs of the products who in turn can educate the customers. We organize group training sessions in every city from time to time, upload videos on Youtube showing the advantages of using SSD.”

Khalid Wani of WD, “Keeping up with the various demands from our consumers, WD offers a very strong portfolio of SSDs designed based on different customer segments- WD BLACK SSDs for gaming, WD Blue for content creation and productivity applications and WD Green for everyday computing.  We recently launched the WD My Passport SSD powered with NVMe technology, offering read speeds of up to 1050MB/s1 and write speeds of up to 1000MB/s1. The portable SSD houses a stylish, durable metal design that is both shock and vibration resistant, it resists drops of up to 6.5ft. Consumers have also become more conscious about backing up their data and the new SSD comes equipped with password enabled 256-bit AES hardware encryption to help protect valuable content simply.” 

Ajay Kogta of SSD URdistree (Distributor of HP), “Awareness on SSD among partners is far better today than 2-3 years back. Now this education is going further from partners to end customers.”

Rajesh Gupta of Micron India, “We at Micron engage our partners at multiple levels including webinars, self-paced online modules, live sessions to focused teams (including demos), blogs and  technical forums to educate them on the latest SSD technologies & solutions.”

Nitin Malhotra of Hikvision, “Over time we will be educating partners by emphasizing numerous advantages, such as fast read-write speed, no noise, lower consumption, portability, endurance etc. System Integrators will play an vital role in educating the end user hence it is important to have the benefits known to that channel.”

Tejashwar Singh of Kingston, “At Kingston, we believe in adopting a channel-friendly approach and growing with our partners. We work towards strengthening the ecosystem for our partners and we assure that we will bring numerous business opportunities for them. With our compelling product and market expertise, we provide a platform for our channel partners to improve and grow in terms of revenue and reach. On an ongoing basis, we do training sessions with our channel partners in order to educate them about our new products and share useful first-hand information about the industry trends. We consider our channel partners to be an intrinsic part of our growth story and hence, we will consistently work towards imparting knowledge around the SSD segment and various technologies.” 

Mehul Kagalwala of Silicon Power, “We are planning several partner training programs. Once COVID-19 comes under control, we will conduct regular roadshows and technical training programs for our partners. Yes, we are thinking about manufacturing in India, but it will take time before we could reach conclusions in this regard. With a big and growing youth population, Indian gaming segment offers a lot of opportunity for SP memory products. We have a wide range of products for the gaming segment. To start with, we will focus on the SSDs and DRAM, and then gradually expand our portfolio by adding product categories like Memory cards, Ext HDDs, mobile accessories, etc.” 

Future Trends for SSDs

Internal SSD is poised to grow in the future owing to its outstanding features. Growing internet penetration, e-commerce, digitization creating large amount of data will contribute in the growth. Rise in the number of gamers requiring super fast and smooth access is also an added factor. Extensive adoption of desktop, laptop and tablet will create a rise in demand for this highly efficient affordable option.

Sanjay Kumar of OSCOO, “With  the  larger  capacity,  higher  speeds and friendlier prices,SSD will comprehensively replace Hard Disk Drive (HDD) in near future.”

Nitin Malhotra of Hikvision, “SSDs usage is becoming more widespread these days and in many cases they capture market share from traditional HHDs. With consumer and enterprise demand showing no signs of slowing, SSD is well on its way to replacing traditional HDDs—it’s just a matter of how soon.”

Tejashwar Singh of Kingston, “Technocrats are constantly upgrading the technology to bring higher innovations to the consumers. The SSDs, down the years, will become more mainstream as the awareness about their benefits will increase manifold. Our lives in the next few years will become more dependent on technology, and we will become more digital, hence the need to manage and store data will also increase. SSDs – both SATA and NVMe – are reliable, faster and safer to manage and store data, and therefore we will see more demand for the SSDs in India as well as across the world. Even for the enterprise customers, our range of Data Centre SSDs will be a boon to move forward. Customers who upgrade from SATA/SAS SSDs to NVMe SSDs will enjoy the similarities in implementation but with much faster data rates and lower latency. Our compelling range of Data Centre SSDs will take the growth story of the enterprise segment to the next level with high-storage capacity and best-in class enterprise performance.” 

Sachin Sharma of ADATA, “HDD demand in the coming days will further go down as people want to shift to new technology. The only hurdle for SSD to take over HDD is the price. Once the price gap between HDD and SSD is nominal, SSD will replace HDD. The SSD market in India is poised to grow in the coming years. Rapid rise in the next generation connected devices, the growing premium & high-end PC market, need for higher performance & capacity storage devices, increasing IT spending, and growing number data centers would spur future demand for SSDs in India. According to the Market and Research, India SSD market is projected to reach nearly $156 million by 2023.”

Rajesh Gupta of Micron India, “It is a matter of time before the next generation of technology takes over. SSDs are currently growing at double digits and with steady reduction of cost of SSDs per gigabyte and other advantages. SSDs would keep growing rapidly at the expense of HDDs for the foreseeable future.”

Manoj Gupta of Fortune Marketing (Distributor of PNY), “The latest research shows that the Internal SSD market to grow by 15-20% in H2 when compared to H1 2020. Extended WFH in the new normal requires smoother and faster PC performance. Rather than buying a new device, consumers are looking to upgrade their existing laptop and desktop memory with internal SSD. The online educational classes will also need an uninterrupted session; hence Internal SSD market is definitely on the path of recovery in H2. SSDs are the next big thing in the hard drive world. They are faster, quieter, susceptible to shock, low power consuming, less accessibility time with higher productivity and reliability. The most attractive feature of SSDs is its sequential read and write speed making it much faster than the conventional HDDs. Such impressive features result in the extended battery life for PCs, tablets and laptops making it a popular option among consumers.”

Ajay Kogta of SSD URdistree (HP), “India is a big market for used Computers and SSD improves performance of old computers also, this has created huge demand for SSDs. If price becomes more affordable, this transition from HDD to SSD may happen in less than 3 years also.”

According to 6Wresearch, Indian Solid State Drive Market to record $156 million by 2023. Growing demand for high-end computing systems for enterprise segment, growing number of data centers, increasing penetration of on-premise storage system, coupled with proliferation of big data & cloud computing markets are the key driving factors for India SSD market. Amongst application market, enterprise SSD segment acquired largest revenue share of the market pie in the country. Over the next six years, client SSD segment is forecast to grow at a relatively higher CAGR during 2017-23. 

According to Study the demand in Q3, 2020 is expected to increase by more than 40% QoQ for internal SSD market owing to the festive season accompanied with early online deals. External SSD will also increase by 25-30%. While SATA internal SSD will drive the market, PCIe NVMe SSD will play a crucial role due to their super fast interface and read-write speed.

To Sum Up

The demand for SSDs is growing steadily. Advantages of SSDs, compared to HDDs, higher speeds, higher performance, low power consumption, quieter activity as there are no moving or rotating parts and lesser space occupied as SSDs are compact. On the other side, SSDs still cost higher than HDDs, but the price gap is expected to narrow further with the increasing demand, mass production and new innovations that can make SSDs commercially competitive to HDDs in the coming times. Most providers believe that SSDs will replace a significant share of HDDs in the next 3 to 5 years. 

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