Shipments and sales of SSDs will see strong growth in 2012 despite a disappointing market for Ultrabook PCs.

El Segundo, Calif.-based analyst firm IHS iSuppli this week said the storage industry shipped 12.9 million SSDs in the first half of 2012 and 10.5 million units in the third quarter, and it is expected to ship 17.5 million units in the fourth quarter, for a total of just under 41 million units for the year.

However, IHS iSuppli had been expecting third-quarter shipments of 13 million units and fourth-quarter shipments of 20 million units.

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Even so, the full-year 2012 figure is up 69 percent over 2011 shipments, IHS iSuppli said.

The shipment numbers include stand-alone SSDs and those used as separate cache devices for hard drives in enterprise and mobile PC markets, the analyst firm said.

Lower-than-expected shipments of Ultrabook PCs has negatively impacted SSD shipments, wrote Ryan Chien, analyst for memory and storage at IHS iSuppli, in a statement about the market.

However, part of the impact from slow Ultrabook PC adoption was reduced by falling SSD prices, which has accelerated adoption in other areas of the storage industry, Chien wrote.

"Intel Corp. has not matched its ambitious goals for ultrabooks with the marketing needed to propel the platforms as a desirable, affordable alternative to conventional notebooks and tablets. ... However, pricing for SSDs has fallen well below the $1-per-gigabyte threshold, making their value proposition more attractive than ever," he wrote. "Because of this, SSDs are finding uses in other products, helping to compensate for the shortfall in ultrabooks."

For all of 2012, IHS iSuppli estimated that SSD sales will generate about $7.5 billion in revenue for the industry, up 35 percent over 2011.

PUBLISHED OCT. 12, 2012