http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showA...

excerpt below....

At present, the SSD market is dominated by smaller players, such as BiT Micro Networks, Mtron, Super Talent and Stec. These vendors do not have fabs and must procure NAND parts from outside suppliers. And only a few of the SSD vendors develop their own controller technologies.

But the potential for PC market adoption of solid-state drives is changing the SSD landscape. Some 40 vendors are already chasing a total SSD market that IDC expects to grow from $373 million in 2006 to $5.4 billion by 2011. Intel, SanDisk and Samsung have recently rolled out SSD products. Now Micron has tossed its hat in the ring, and Toshiba may be next.

This week, Micron rolled out the RealSSD family of drives for PC, embedded and related applications. Based on Micron's own NAND flash devices, the new solid-state drives vary in density from 1 to 64 Gbytes.

A spokeswoman for Toshiba, meanwhile, confirmed that the NAND giant expects to field a drive early next year.

For Intel, Micron and Toshiba, SSDs represent a new NAND growth driver and an avenue to sell their internal capacity. Even the disk drive community is seeing the SSD light, with Seagate and others expected to enter the fray in 2008. Most of the chip and drive giants are developing their own controllers.

The eventual winners in the marketplace? It's too early to tell, but some see a shakeout on the horizon.

"Obviously, the fabs guys have a cost advantage," said Niebel of WebFeet. "But you will still need to have the critical intellectual property and controller technology" to succeed.