Kingstonpresident and co-founder John Tu has predicted consolidation in the memorymarket next year will help to stabilise ever falling prices that have doggedthe channel in recent months.
“As the impact of the economic downturn starts to hit home,it is likely that some of the smaller players in the memory market will haveincreasing difficulties and may not survive,” said Tu.
“Too many companies producing memory chips have causedprices to fall over the last months and consolidation should help the industrycorrect itself,” he added.
Other major trends expected to play out in the memory marketnext year include the coming of age of DRAM, high demand for Flash, thecontinued rise of virtualisation and Green IT, which many believe has become abit hackneyed.
“[DDR3 memory] will be boosted by the introduction andadoption of triple-channel and possibly quad-channel memory technologies,” hesaid, adding “2009 is likely to see increased demand for high capacity, highperformance SD cards.”
Many IT vendors jumped on the green bandwagon to markettheir technologies and helped to create a wave of disinterest among customers.Arguments now centre on energy efficiency which is where costs savings can beachieved.
In this respect green IT will be a hit topic, “spirallingenergy costs are impacting everyone so if companies can use lower energy ITequipment it won’t be solely for ecological reasons but because it is good forthe bottom line,” said Tu.
One area that is set for continued interest is solid state drives(SSDs) and Kinstonsaid that though the market will not become mainstream any time soon, as theprice will continue to be inhibitor.
However, reported reliability issues that the industrywitnessed have been ironed out and refinements made by manufacturers. Tu addedthat prices would come down as the over-supplied NAND market could lead toprice erosion.
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