According to a news published at ars technica, iSuppli has released results of a market research that forecasts technology penetration in both the laptop and desktop sectors over the next few years to make predictions about which technologies will become part of OEM equipment in personal computers.
A rather surprising result of the above research is that by 2009, more than 60 percent of laptops will feature some sort of flash-based storage. Today, only 0.7 percent of laptops come with flash drives. However, increasing capacity and decreasing cost of flash storage over the next few years may change this number significantly.
What makes flash-based storage interesting, according to the original article, is basically the following:
- Flash technology can offer faster seek times than hard drives as well as being far more shock-resistant, an important factor for mobile use
- Flash drives can be manufactured in smaller enclosures than hard drives and consumer less electrical power
iSuppli predicts that the transition from hard drives to flash drives will still be ongoing in 2009.
