Panasonic Secretly Joins SSD Market With Re-Branded OCZ Drives

Panasonic has discretely began to sell its own line of solid state drives in Japan. While the company is not actually know for making PC parts, the drives are believed to be based on OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot M10 controller and may have been manufactured by Toshiba Corp.'s OCZ Storage Solutions in Taiwan. According to Akiba PC Online, at least one store in Akihibara began to sell Premium SSD lineups from Panasonic, which come in retail packages, along with bundled software and adapters.

Panasonic 2.5"/7mm form-factor SSDs come in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB models, with a Serial ATA-6Gb/s interface. The drives are based on OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot M10 controller and, most likely, which happens to be Toshiba's second-generation 19nm MLC NAND flash memory. The features match those of OCZ's Vertex 460 SSDs.

OCZ Storage Solutions, hasn't given any word that they have started sellong SSD controllers to third-party companies. This event is often considered as imortant since it coud greatly impact and inlfuence other SSD makers on the market. This could mean that Toshiba had decided to increase its revenue and finally sell the 460 SSD techology to Panasonic.

In the meantime, there is no definite nswer whether Panasonic decided to finally join the market of solid-state drives. The SSD market is pretty somehow crowded and the company may barely make a lot of money by reselling OCZ's solid-state drives under its own name. According to some rumors, Panasonic may have acquired unbranded OCZ Vertex 460 SSDs in a bid and have them integrated into laptops, but bought more than it needed. So, as not to lose money, Panasonic decided to sell the "extra" SSDs under its own brand.

The entry-level version of Panasonic Premium SSD costs around ¥8980 (£51, $88, €65). This is actually a more than a reasonable price for Japan.