Surprise, surprise…

A little war of words is brewing over solid-state drives (SSDs) and their market ascendancy in 2012. SanDisk, a company best known for making memory cards — the kind that goes in cameras and other gadgets — says that its “small form-factor client SSD” business is going gangbusters. Moreover, this is the year that the storage tech will really take off, posing a serious threat to traditional hard drives.

A lot of factors are going into the company’s rosy outlook. Certainly, plummeting prices contribute to this view, but also a PC market that’s warming to SSDs. The impending avalanche of Ultrabooks, thin and light laptops that are practically tailored for SSD drives, is expected accelerate the trend.

Not so fast, says Western Digital, a maker of said traditional hard drives.

Though it won’t be able to resume normal hard drive production until the third quarter, as result of crippling floods in Thailand, the company doubts that SSDs will have much of an impact. The company feels that most consumers will continue to opt for hard drives and hybrid drives (part hard drive, part flash memory) as the storage medium of choice for their Ultrabooks.

Many geeks, including this one, would beg to differ. What’s your take?

Image credit: SanDisk