Phison Electronics, an independent developer of controllers for solid-state drives (SSDs), may lower prices of its products in a bid to boost shipments. The company needs to gain market share since large SSD producers tend to use their own controllers inside its drives nowadays, as a result, going forward it will be a challenge for independent makers of controllers to survive.

Phison’s sales in June were $90.68 million (£53 million, €66.55 million), which is 1.7 per cent lower sequentially and an increase of 3.9 per cent year-over-year. The chairman of the company – Khein-Seng Pua – said that Phison “will exert all-out efforts, including price reductions, to ramp up its shipments of SSD devices in the third quarter of 2014”, reports DigiTimes. The company’s gross margin at present is around 20 per cent, a record high.

Recently Seagate agreed to acquire LSI SandForce and LSI Nytro divisions from Avago, whereas SanDisk announced its takeover of Fusion-io. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Toshiba also develop their own SSD controllers. Phison is one of the last independent designers of SSD controllers. The company supplies its products to Kingston and Micron. In a bid to remain competitive on the market of controllers, Phison needs to increase its shipments.

If Phison lowers prices of SSD controllers, solid-state drives will also get more affordable.

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KitGuru Says: While it will be good to see more affordable SSD controllers, do not expect Phison to cut the prices by more than 10 per cent. The company’s 20 per cent gross margin can hardly allow Phison to initiate a real price-war on the market of SSD devices.

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