Toshiba to build SSD plant overseas

Japanese media reports indicate Toshiba plans to manufacture solid state drives (SSDs) in the Philippines starting as early as April 2010.

The plant located outside of Japan will manufacture SSDs ranging in size from 64GB up to 512GB, though support for larger drives will be possible.  Toshiba hopes to generate 10 times the current revenue figure in SSD sales next year, but didn’t announce how its SSD unit is going right now.

It’s not uncommon for Korean and Japanese companies to build their manufacturing plans in other countries, such as the Philippines, as both land and labor are cheaper.

Although HDDs still dwarf SSDs in terms of market share, analysts believe it’s only a matter of time before the faster, more energy efficient SSDs take over.  Research company iSuppli believes the SSD market will be worth more than $12.3 billion in 2012 — in 2008, however, the SSD market was valued at just $84 million.

SSDs are most commonly used in netbooks at the moment, but their use will expand to the enterprise before making a long-awaited debut into the consumer desktop market.  Intel, Toshiba, SanDisk, Samsung, and several other companies continue to announce higher capacity SSDs they hope consumers take interest in.