WD buys entrance into SSD market

Western Digital has officially entered the solid-state drive (SSD) market, although in a manner that analysts and industry insiders weren’t fully expecting.  The company, which has been willing to patiently wait and see what other companies develop, has purchased SSD component firm SiliconSystems.

“SiliconSystem’s intellectual property and technical expertise will significantly accelerate our solid-state drive development program for the netbook, client and enterprise markets,” WD CEO John Coyne said in a statement.

SiliconSystem traditionally dabbled in the enterprise SSD space only, which is an indicator WD will focus its first SSD products on the enterprise market.  Depending on how the business unit does, it could expand from enterprise towards the consumer market for netbooks and desktops in the future.

Despite not being known by casual consumers, SiliconSystems racked up one-third of SSD revenues last year, and that number could increase now that WD has become involved.

Seagate, Samsung, SanDisk, Toshiba, and other companies are investing heavily into SSD, as each company sees it as the format that has the potential to replace the Hard Disk Drive (HDD).  WD’s 2.5-inch drives are extremely popular, but there was a growing level of anticipation for when the company would get its feet wet with SSD products.

WD’s latest purchase will be integrated into the company immediately, and will don the name:  WD Solid-State Storage.

I have long believed WD would make a move related to SSD sometime in 2009, but didn’t expect it to officially enter the fray by purchasing a little known hardware firm.  I expect them to try and begin shipping enterprise SSD products as soon as possible, especially if they are serious about trying to capture the enterprise SSD market.