Hybrid HDD Ultrabooks to attack pure-SSD Ultrabook market

Ultrabook sales are expected to grow this year with prices to fall to between $799 and $899, according to researchers at TrendFocus. As their prices approach that of tablets, consumers are predicted choose them over tablets due to their support for content creation.

While TrendFocus forecasts over double SSD growth in the second quarter of 2012 compared to the same quarter in 2011 due to falling NAND prices, a 128GB SSD still accounts for roughly 25% of the BOM (build of materials) cost of an Ultrabook. With the development of thin 7mm 2.5″ HDDs, TrendFocus predicts that Ultrabook manufacturers will make use of a large capacity 7mm 2.5″ HDD coupled with a small mSATA to run as a cache for the SSD, to undercut with pure SSD Ultrabooks.

The benefit of using a hybrid approach is that it provides HDD’s large storage capacity with near-SSD performance by caching frequently accessed data on the mSATA. According to TrendFocus a 320GB HDD with a 32GB mSATA SSD would reduce the storage price to 19% of the BOM cost. Seagate, which is already on its third generation of hybrid drives also expects competitors to release their own hybrid hard drives, which is where the SSD is embedded in the HDD as a direct drop-in-replacement for a standard HDD.

The full source report can be read on The Register.