Barron’s Tech Trader Daily is reporting that Apple has awarded a contract to STEC to replace Samsung as the primary supplier of flash memory-based Solid State Drives (SSDs) for the 13.3-inch Apple MacBook Air.
This is very interesting in light of STEC being one of the first SSD makers to be sued by Seagate over patents concerning SSDs.
Apple must have confidence that STEC has a strong case against Seagate or that STEC and Seagate will work something out – Apple is not a company to make a move such as this without looking at potential issues that could impede production of their laptops (based on problems they’ve experienced in the past).
If you take a look at STEC’s SATA page, you’ll see exactly why Apple is choosing to do this:
Stec makes a 1.8-inch SSD (yes, the MacBook Air is using 1.8″ hard drives), the “MACH8 SSD” that has both an ATA and a SATA-II interface and consumes between 0.5W and 2.1W.
More importantly, the MACH8 SSD comes in capacities ranging from 8GB to 256GB. Apple would love to be one of the first to offer that kind of capacity in such a thin and light laptop.
Article: Barron’s Tech Trader Daily
(Thanks to Elliott for the link)