IDC has put out a very expensive report called A Hard Choice That Won’t be Made in a Flash: HDD Versus NAND that looks at the differences between NAND flash memory and microdrives in portable consumer products. Right now, microdrives may have the price advantage but flash memory is expected to catch up with pricing decreasing at an expected 43 percent compound annual rate until 2009. But is price enough to give one technology the edge over the other? IDC does not think so and expects that we will see both technologies offer higher capacities while each retain certain advantages (form factor, power consumption, weight, durability, data transfer rates, etc) over the other.
