Last month we reported on the trend of rising memory prices due to DRAM supply constraints. Recently, we’ve seen a similar trend in NAND flash.
Since we introduced our first Solid State Drive in January 2010, we’ve been following the pricing and availability of components very closely. As part of our continuing efforts to keep our readers well-informed on industry trends that could affect purchasing decisions, we’ve been witnessing a price increase in NAND flash modules themselves.
For quite a while, it seemed that the longer you waited to upgrade to a SSD, the lower price you could get. Now, though, the pricing on 64Gb NAND has increased 31% since January, and just like with DRAM, it takes a few months for any component’s increased cost to affect the retail pricing of the final product. So, while prices have not yet begun to rise, the recent trend of falling SSD prices has certainly stopped at this point.
With NAND flash prices on the rise, it isn’t just SSDs that will be affected. Flash Memory Cards, USB drives, and other NAND flash based products may see similar upticks in pricing in the upcoming months.
Our purchasing suggestion?
It is very likely that we are at the bottom of the retail pricing curve and from our market analysis, prices are likely to start rising in the short term before continuing the natural progression of lower pricing over time. If you’re planning on purchasing a Solid State Drive during 2013 – now is probably the best time as far as pricing goes.
We’ve been waiting and waiting for Apple to release the next version of OS X Mountain Lion in hopes that the next full version would have all the necessary components to setup a Fusion drive on any Mac capable of installing a hard drive and SSD together. A little over a week ago, Apple released OS X version 10.8.3 and, with one small caveat, our hopes were fulfilled.
As you may recall, Apple 
