Samsung denies reports that it plans to halt consumer SSD production despite NAND supply woes
Samsung is adamant that its consumer SATA SSD products will not be affected by the ongoing NAND shortage that is impacting its business. A new rumor cycle started this week, claiming that Samsung would stop or slow production of consumer SATA III SSDs. Samsung says it isn’t phasing out its SATA SSDs. The trouble is, a denial does not automatically refill the channel, and the broader NAND market has been going south for months.
But the part of the story that seems to have animated so many should give them pause.
To back up a bit, the original claim (via Hardware Info) was made in a TrendForce report published in December (a couple of days ago). This shift in priorities will direct more NAND capacity toward higher-value products and customers.
Several outlets interpreted that as Samsung saying it would cease making SATA SSDs altogether, or at least most consumer SSDs.
Before jumping into the meat of things, we should get this out of the way: Samsung isn’t exiting the manufacturing of SATA SSDs. Samsung can keep SATA SSDs alive while still starving them of NAND. We wouldn’t expect an official EOL announcement or press release; that’s not how this typically works. The path from mainstream to sometimes-on-demand requires major allocation decisions to drive it.
If NVMe made SATA SSDs boring about 10 minutes after it showed up, the machines that still ship with spinning drives default to SATA SSDs as their primary upgrade path, old desktops. Budget laptops. Office fleets can’t avoid high maintenance and replacement costs. DIY NAS boxes. The hard drive remains the major bottleneck for most ten-year-old PCs.
When it comes to flash storage, enthusiasts have long spoken out against SATA SSDs and “it is boring, it’s dead, and ultimately winding down.” However, when NAND pricing goes bad, customers still look to the usual SATA performance level and purchase whatever is cheapest.
That means the SATA SSD will become the default standard in cost-sensitive environments.
