TECH NEWS – The company has reportedly said goodbye to the SSD market, and another company will now be responsible for these popular and sought-after products.

We are at the end of an era. According to rumors, Western Digital wants to focus on AI and has therefore left the SSD production to produce only AI HDDs. Solidigm recently exited the SSD manufacturing business, so Western Digital is not alone. According to TechSpot, SanDisk is now in charge of manufacturing as they are moving the SSD division to SanDisk. For example, the WD_Black NVMe SSDs (which can even be used in the PlayStation 5, as they have fast enough read and write speeds) will be manufactured by SanDisk, presumably under the name SD_Black, as there will be no Western Digital branding.

This may be a surprising development for Western Digital fans, as the company’s products have been on par with Samsung and Crucial in being associated with fast, high-quality SSDs. Hopefully, SanDisk will be able to maintain that level, as it would just be a name change and everyone would be happy. Although the reason for Western Digital’s decision is still uncertain, the company reportedly sees a brighter future in the HDD markets, especially as it looks to focus on producing HDDs for artificial intelligence workloads.

In a blog post a few weeks ago, Western Digital CEO Irving Tan said that HDD shipments are expected to increase due to market demand, and that is where the company will focus in the future. So it’s safe to say that Western Digital won’t be in the SSD market… at least not until the artificial intelligence hype dies down. Hopefully, the company will focus on aspects around the supply chain so that customer service can be tied to it.

So Western Digital’s SSDs will be out of the market and then SanDisk will take over. This will change the names of the SSDs, and since the company has done a good job of service, it will not be easy for SanDisk to keep the consumer camp.

Source: WCCFTech