Western Digital Exits SSD Market; SanDisk to Manage Current and Future Products

Western Digital has decided to step away from the SSD market and will now shift its focus entirely to creating hard disk drives, specifically for the AI sector, marking a significant shift in strategy.

In an unexpected move, Western Digital has handed over its SSD operations to SanDisk. As a result, popular lines such as WD_Black could soon be rebranded to SD_Black. It appears the storage industry is struggling to capture consumer interest lately, as evidenced by this change and Solidigm’s earlier decisions. A report from TechSpot reveals that Western Digital plans to concentrate exclusively on its core hard disk technology, essentially transferring its SSD business to SanDisk. This means that while SanDisk will take over the production of these SSDs, the familiar Western Digital logo will no longer be part of the picture.

This shift is certainly startling for fans of Western Digital’s SSD offerings, which have been lauded alongside major players like Samsung and Crucial for their top-tier performance and high speeds. The idea of the Western Digital name disappearing from these products was quite unforeseen. However, consumers shouldn’t worry about an immediate disappearance of these products from store shelves. SanDisk will continue to manage them, so the quality shouldn’t waver.

The reasons behind Western Digital’s decision remain somewhat unclear, though it seems they see more potential in the hard disk market, especially for uses tied to AI. In a recent blog post, WD’s CEO Irving Tan mentioned that there’s an uptick expected in HDD demand due to market trends, leading the company to pivot in this direction for the foreseeable future. Therefore, we can conclude that Western Digital won’t be making a return to the SSD sector anytime soon, at least not while the AI boom persists.

For everyday consumers, the transition of these operations to SanDisk should maintain the same level of reliability, including all aspects of supply chain logistics and after-sales service. We can also anticipate a change in the naming convention from “WD” to “SD,” which is an intriguing development. All in all, Western Digital has certainly left its mark on the SSD landscape, offering us memorable products over the years.