Interpreted the other way, I don’t think that makes sense because on the whole storage has always gotten cheaper with time. Hard drives may cost the same, but they’re larger capacity so really this would only work as an argument if hard drive storage space stayed the same and prices remained the same for consumers but went down for manufacturers.
Also there’s a lot of competition in the space similar to other chips so I don’t see how a company making NAND or platters can afford to sit on their hands like that. The whole point of drive innovation right now is to drive the price per GB down for B2B sales. And that usually translates well to consumer sales too.
The actual shells and manufacturing costs aren’t going down meaningfully. Giving you more for the same price is how consumers benefit the most. Especially because consumer demands for storage (among people willing to buy any, at least) keep going up and there isn’t a big market for HDDs that are half the price but 1/4 of the storage.
They do get cheaper but the cheaper ones don’t get made because they aren’t worth anything anymore. Like sure you can get a 500GB HDD which used to be a moderately priced option and is now basically trash or free. The prices go down, but the key is that consumers no longer want the old thing either.
Actually those are still available. And I will admit if anyone tried to get me to pay 100 dollars for one now I would probably laugh them out of the room.
Interpreted the other way, I don’t think that makes sense because on the whole storage has always gotten cheaper with time. Hard drives may cost the same, but they’re larger capacity so really this would only work as an argument if hard drive storage space stayed the same and prices remained the same for consumers but went down for manufacturers.
Also there’s a lot of competition in the space similar to other chips so I don’t see how a company making NAND or platters can afford to sit on their hands like that. The whole point of drive innovation right now is to drive the price per GB down for B2B sales. And that usually translates well to consumer sales too.
That’s business logic. Consumer logic is that when things get cheaper they should actually be cheaper.
The actual shells and manufacturing costs aren’t going down meaningfully. Giving you more for the same price is how consumers benefit the most. Especially because consumer demands for storage (among people willing to buy any, at least) keep going up and there isn’t a big market for HDDs that are half the price but 1/4 of the storage.
They do get cheaper but the cheaper ones don’t get made because they aren’t worth anything anymore. Like sure you can get a 500GB HDD which used to be a moderately priced option and is now basically trash or free. The prices go down, but the key is that consumers no longer want the old thing either.
Actually those are still available. And I will admit if anyone tried to get me to pay 100 dollars for one now I would probably laugh them out of the room.