SSD Prices Cut In Half Over Last 12 Months [Study]

One of the biggest benefits of a fast evolving tech industry is the constant fall in pricing as newer technologies debut and manufacturing processes become more adept at building those products efficiently.

According to a new research study conducted by The Tech Report solid state drive prices have fallen by upwards of 65 percent in the last 12 months. The drop comes at a time when standard hard drives have actually increased in price because of flooding in Thailand which caused a strain on supply.

The average cost of an SSD drive has fallen by 46 percent while some manufacturers have decreased pricing even further, in some cases by 65 percent.

The price drops appear to have begun in April after a price war began between Kington, Intel, OCZ and Crucial. In one case the Intel 520 series which replaced the 510 series witnessed a $200 drop during a one month period.

Because of the pricing war Crucial, Corsair and OCZ are now selling Solid State Drives at a cost of less than $1 per gigabyte. Intel in the meantime sells the Intel 320 Series 40GB SSD at a cost of $2.31 per gigabyte.

This isn’t the first time we have witnessed drastic price decreases, Sandisk and Kingston pulled off a similar drop in the pricing for microSD cards several years ago, those prices eventually rose once again after Apple began to buy up much of the marketplaces available flash memory, causing supply to dwindle as demand continued to rise.

Here’s a list of price declines based on specific SSD devices over the last seven days:

Are you surprised by SSD pricing declines over the last year or was this type of pricing long overdue?