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Solid State Disks or SSDs were predicted a year ago to be the next big thing in Notebooks and Netbooks. Fast, silent, cool, efficient, no moving parts to break down or make unnerving noises…SSDs are considered to be ideal for the slow chips, limited chassis space and small batteries of portable computers. Everyone you spoke to in the memory industry were sure that SSDs would be an ideal consumer product.

However just like Linux OS, SSDs failed to catch on with consumers the way they were expected to, and have been replaced by standard 2.5 or 1.8 inch HDs on almost all factory loaded netbooks and notebooks. So what happened? Most consumers rebuffed Linux for XP due to familiarity and usability, but those aren’t issues in the HD/SSD debate, so what gives?

Pure and simple, it came down to price and size. NAND memory prices jumped in Q2 of this year and since an SSD is just NAND in a box, that caused the prices of Solid State Drives to rise dramatically. Plus, consumers often still work from a “bigger is better” concept…and a 160G HD MUST be better than a 32 or 64G SSD, right? More room for LOLCats pics and pirated movies, after all.

However despite being a flop with consumers, SSD sales are still skyrocketing in 2009. Analysts at iSuppli predict that total SSD income in 2009 will climb to $883 million dollars. That is a staggering number when you consider that SSDs made $127 million in 2008. Unit shipments will nearly quadruple, from 1.4 million units in 2008 to 5.8 million in 2009.

So if consumers aren’t buying SSDs, who is…and in such enormous numbers?

Surprisingly, it’s the Enterprise that is saving the SSD market.

Digitimes is reporting that the most attractive features of SSDs for Enterprises have been their reliability, low power consumption and minimal heat output, therefore they are packing them into data centers and server farms to replace standard hard drives.

According to Digitimes,

While this is a robust upsurge on year, SSD vendors are anticipating that 2010 and 2011 will be exceptionally strong growth years as data centers and IT computing infrastructures ramp up their adoption, according to iSuppli. Furthermore, corporate adoption should pave the way for an eventual resurgence in the acceptance of notebooks by driving down overall system prices.

iSuppli forecast that the total market for SSDs will climb to US$10.8 billion by 2013, rising at a CAGR of 142.8% from US$127 million in 2008. The unit forecast calls for shipments reaching 65.2 million SSDs by 2013, with the CAGR rising by 115.6% from 1.4 million units in 2008.

Of course, SSDs will not continue to grow on Enterprise use alone, but the expectation is that the consumer market will follow the lead of the Enterprise once prices drop, capacities increase and people become more used to using SSDs in the workplace. Beyond that, many people in the industry have said that no consumer products company has worked out a way to sell SSDs to normal users yet, and have yet to make clear to laymen the advantages of solid state drives over traditional hard drives.

Michael Yang, an analyst at iSupply says…

What’s needed is an SSD company that understands how to relate to the PC consumer, and one that can put together a campaign attractive to users beyond just the price tag. When that happens, this market will surge upward.

However, as it stands now I think it will be quite a while before sales on large capacity SSDs drop to the point that they will be a viable choice for a consumer external drive. At the moment, SSD external drives are still considerably smaller than HD based external drives, as well as more than triple the price. Hopefully rapid advances in NAND technology, driven and paid for by Enterprise sales, will close the gap for consumers sooner rather than later