Western Digital is one of few harddrive manufacturers that has not embraced the Solid State Drive technology. We are already seeing how the second generation drives are coming to market before Christmas, but according to WD there is still no market for SSDs. The company VP of marketing Richard Rutledge says that WD will enter existing markets and announce products when they are actually available. He also brings up the fact that WD consider a number of markets as nonprofitable, except for SSD, video game consoles, car phones and SAS harddrives for example.
Though he adds that there are two interesting niches for Solid State Drives, the budget market for really small SSDs for mobile phones, cameras, but also netbooks. But also the high-performance segment with SSDs that cost more than $199. There they see both the business and high-end PC market as interesting targets.
With that said, there are no concrete plans for launching SSDs within the near future, which does feel a bit risky right now. But at the same time they would not be alone, also Seagate has announced that it is taking it easy with Solid State Drives.
