According to reports, although the main control integrated circuit supply problem that hindered production in 2021 has been resolved, the global solid-state drive market still fell by 10.7% last year. SSD shipments are said to be only 114 million units in 2022, with much of the decline affecting smaller suppliers.
The report from market research company TrendForce stated that the combined market share of the top five SSD brands increased from 53% to 59%, mainly due to the falling prices of high-performance, large-capacity SSDs.
The report doesn't explicitly mention the reasons for last year's market decline, but it's clear that demand for solid-state drives remains weak as the PC and computer hardware markets shrink. TrendForce said that market sentiment "quickly reversed" at the end of the third quarter of 2022 as NAND flash memory suppliers actively reduced production, leading to price increases across the industry.
The top three solid-state drive brands last year were Kingston, ADATA, and Lexar, and the market shares of the top two have increased compared with 2021. Kingston's global market share is 28%, and the other two are 9% and 8% respectively. Kintek, Netac, Colorful, PNY, Teclast, Gigabyte and Transcend ranked among the top ten, with the remaining manufacturers accounting for only 24% of the market share.
The report points out that looking forward to 2023, large enterprises will still dominate, but the overall market may remain sluggish as the global economy is in trouble. The report doesn't mention year-to-date statistics, though, so we don't know if the market has successfully recovered after a slow 2022 or is still struggling to get back to pre-pandemic levels.
SSD prices have been gradually declining over the past few years, allowing consumers to upgrade from older mechanical hard drives to SSDs or add new high-capacity SSDs to their computers. However, prices have begun to stabilize in recent months as suppliers have cut back on NAND flash production, so users looking to purchase a new SSD should do so during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales rather than wait.