OCZ to leave DRAM market, focus on SSD

Brian Ambrozy 11 Jan, 2011 at 2:21pm ET Article published in Tech

Yesterday during their quarterly earnings call Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technologies, announced that OCZ would be leaving the DRAM market by February 28th, 2011 to focus on the burgeoning SSD sector.

Despite announcements and CES showings of new RAM: Gold XTE, Platinum XTE, and Blade 2 product lines, OCZ sees the writing on the wall for continually falling DRAM prices. Some would say this is a good time to get out of that market.

OCZ’s success in the SSD sector leaves no doubt that they are well-poised to make this move. Considering the announcements of their Vertex 3 EX and Vertex 3 PRO drives (not to mention their extreme high performance Z-drives,) they are sitting very close to, if not at, the top of performance hill in the SSD world right now.

Comments

11 Jan 2011 ~ 2:24pm RyanMM This is incredibly disappointing news. I'd say roughly 50% or more of the DRAM purchases I've made in the last 5 years were OCZ memory. They always competed awesome on price and performance and offered great customer service. Such a bummer.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 2:24pm Thrax Sounds like a good move, but I'll really miss OCZ RAM.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 2:27pm Snarkasm /me holds onto his 12GB

I'll keep them forever...
11 Jan 2011 ~ 2:28pm Thrax START HOARDING!
11 Jan 2011 ~ 2:29pm primesuspect I knew this day would come. I think I actually remember having a conversation with Eric about this a couple of years ago when OCZ first started making SSDs
11 Jan 2011 ~ 2:34pm BuddyJ Not surprising, plus it should bolster their stock prices being tied to one less-crazy market.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 2:50pm fatcat they dropped RAM for energy drinks....
11 Jan 2011 ~ 3:05pm Tushon Echoing Ryan, I'm sad to see them go and will be buying some of the new RAM.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 3:19pm QuadWhore But... their mem was so good...

Good thing I'm a Patriot fan. My ram is green.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 4:19pm Bandrik Well.... crap. I suppose there is still Patriot memory and a couple other groups I've come to trust... but I sure will miss OCZ RAM.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 4:41pm Snarkasm I'll have to go back to Crucial or Mushkin. OH THE HUGE MANATEE
11 Jan 2011 ~ 4:45pm Garg What Snark said. It sucks to have one less reliable brand, though.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 4:53pm MAGIC This seems like a good move. I am sure the DDR market is much more fierce with so many competitors. OCZ really capitalized on the SSD market early on and made a good name for themselves there. Margins have to be much better in SSDs.

So.. is my OCZ gold a collectors item now?
11 Jan 2011 ~ 5:20pm GooD I'll miss OCZ ram too

My last 3 computers were using OCZ ram.

It's not a bad move tho, just a sad one.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 5:23pm QuadWhore My next build will definitely have an OCZ ssd, now that this has happened.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 7:37pm Tim They are leaving the world of continuously falling DRAM prices to go to the world of continuously falling SSD prices. Sounds like a good business decision to me.
11 Jan 2011 ~ 8:58pm ardichoke I believe I speak for everyone on the Internet when I say
12 Jan 2011 ~ 12:28am Tushon

Tim wrote:

They are leaving the world of continuously falling DRAM prices to go to the world of continuously falling SSD prices. Sounds like a good business decision to me.

Pray tell, what should they do?
12 Jan 2011 ~ 1:14am Tim I don't know.
12 Jan 2011 ~ 1:46am Tushon

Tim wrote:

I don't know.

Then don't speculate on their business choices being poor without any hint of a substantial nature to your claims.
12 Jan 2011 ~ 8:06am Zuntar More SATAIII drives please Sirs kthx.
12 Jan 2011 ~ 8:33am mertesn

Zuntar wrote:

More SATAIII drives please Sirs kthx.

Vertex 3 is SATA III. If the specs are accurate, it's roughly twice as fast as Vertex 2. No word yet on whether the Agility or any other lines will be brought into a "3" series, but I'd imagine it'll happen this year sometime.