Generally when most of us think about SSDs, we think about a number of very common names such as OCZ, Kingston, ADATA and Corsair, but when it comes to the bulk of SSDs sold on the market, the major players are actually guys like SanDisk, Samsung, Crucial, and Toshiba, which we’ll refer to as Tier 1 manufacturers. These guys are high volume SSD manufacturers who not only produce actual SSDs themselves, but also own the fab that produces the NAND memory powering the SSD, which in turn gives them access to a stable supply of high quality NAND, control over NAND design, as well as control over NAND pricing. As you may expect, this a huge advantage in the market especially with so few Tier 1 SSD manufacturers in existence.

Now up until now many of these Tier 1 manufacturers have been operating a very quiet consumer business, instead focusing on the OEM and SI business rather than deal in the consumer space. However, with the popularity of SSDs on the rise, many of these Tier 1 manufacturers are jumping in for their own share of the market. A couple years ago, Samsung quietly launched the Samsung 470 which ended up becoming one of the top SSDs on the market. Since then, Samsung has really captured a huge chunk of the consumer SSD market with their newer Samsung 830 and 840 series SSDs, thanks to their strong marketing push along with simply having an excellent product at a reasonable price. SanDisk has also jumped into the market by quietly launching the SanDisk Extreme last year and recently launching the Extreme II that we recently reviewed. Of course with all these Tier 1 manufacturers jumping into the consumer market, it is no surprise that Toshiba is interested in taking of piece of the SSD market.