In case you didn't notice, Micron (Crucual) dropped a bomb on SSD pricing when they moved to 16nm, prices already have dropped to 35 cents per GB for their SSDs. Micron reportedly has reduced sales of its NAND flash chips to other companies in order to support the production of its own Crucial brand SSDs and aims to double its SSD shipments quarter on quarter, the sources noted, citing a company internal estimate.

Kingston has ramped up its SSD shipments to 600,000 units a month and is competing with SanDisk and Samsung for the number one vendor ranking in the segment, said the sources.

Intel has recently launched its new 9-series chipsets that feature native support for M.2 SSDs, which is likely to encourage other memory storage firms to roll out related SSDs in the second half of 2014. M.2 SSDs support both PCIe and SATA interfaces and have a strong possibility of replacing 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, according to Digitimes Research.

SanDisk ranked as the second-largest vendor in the consumer SSD segment with a 16% share in 2013 compared to the sixth title with a 6% share a year earlier, CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in Taipei recently.

But SanDisk has also been aggressive in the enterprise-use SSD segment, expecting sales of these SSDs to reach US$1 billion in 2016 and eventually to take the number one vendor ranking in the sector in 2017, Digitimes reported earlier.