Last Monday, Fujitsu announced they where halting 1.8-inch hard drive production plans as solid-state flash drives grow in popularity among portable devices manufacturers. "We want to see if the market tips toward flash, or if it stays with hard drives," said Masao Sakamoto, a Fujitsu spokesman.
While solid-state flash drives are still more expensive and hold less data compared to conventional hard drive storage, the continued adoption and popularity of this technology will help lower manufacturing costs and boost storage capacity, while enjoying improved battery time, faster seek times and lighter computers and portable devices.
This move by Fujitsu should come as no surprise, as they have been watching their profit margins leak with 2.5-inch hard drives falling prices and increased competition within the segment. While on the 1.8-inch HDD market they would have had to compete with Seagate, Toshiba and Samsung. SSD seems to be on the rise lately finding it's way into more laptops and portable devices. SanDisk and Toshiba are already offering 32GB and 64GB solid-state flash drives, respectively.