Dutch electronics giant Philips showcased their first SSDs at Computex in Taiwan. The company will target the Asian market with their solid state disks, a release in Europe and the United States are not planned. The drives will use Toshiba NAND together with a controller of the Taiwanese Phison. Philips is no stranger to SSDs, the company has introduced external SSDs in 2012.
It's unclear if the latest Philips SSDs will use Toshiba's latest generation 19 nm NAND or an older variant. It's likely the latter as Phison controllers are usually not used in high-end SSDs. Controllers from Phison have been used before in SSDs from Micron and Patriot. Philips has specified sequential read speeds up to 500 MB/s while the maximum sequential write speed is 400 MB/s.
The 7 mm thick Philips SSDs will be available in three capacities, 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB for an undisclosed price. Readers from Asia should be able to purchase the drives in Q3 of this year.
The SSD market is very competitive, companies that want their share of the market need excellent performance and/or aggressive pricing. Companies that manufacture either their own NAND, controller or both have an advantage is securing supplies and pricing. Philips is in a joint venture with Lite-On, PLDS which sells products under the brand names LiteON, HP and Plextor but does not develop or manufacture their own NAND or controllers.
