Kingston Technology expects monthly shipments of its solid-state drives (SSD) to top 100,000 units in the fourth quarter of 2011, up from the almost 70,000 shipped currently, according to the US-based memory module house.
Kingston forecasts that shipments of its SSDs for the entire 2011 will hit the one million mark.
In terms of shipment breakdown by customer type, enterprise users account for 70% of Kingston's overall SSD shipments at present while retailers make up the remainder, the company revealed. SSDs shipped to the enterprise sector are premium products with capacities ranging from 96-256GB, while those with 64GB target retail markets, Kingston said.
Kingston added that it is also shipping customized SSDs for industrial applications with capacities of 16-32GB.
In addition, Kingston pointed out that chip suppliers' improved production processes will lower prices for SSDs significantly in the foreseeable future. Major NAND chip producers reportedly are moving forward to transition their manufacturing processes to 20nm-class this year.
The cost of 1GB of NAND may fall below the US$1 mark in 2012 when NAND flash vendors mainly use 2Xnm node technologies to make chips and begin trial runs on 1Xnm, Kingston predicted. The adoption of SSDs will then grow at a rapid pace.