At one time, the Plextor name was one of the most recognizable and iconic names in the field of storage drives – and media.
Today, the company that associated its name with high performance and quality announced that it is ending its operation and operations. Parent company Kioxia has decided to retire the Plextor brand for its solid state drive (SSD) units. Instead, it will start selling these products under the SSSTC (Solid State Storage Technology Corporation) brand in the future.
This particular move by Kioxia comes after the acquisition of Plextor and the entire SSD business of its then parent company Lite-On in 2019. Since then, Plextor has struggled to keep up with new storage technologies. With the availability of the new PCIe controllers Gen. 4 and PCIe Gen. 5 Plextor failed to take advantage of the new Phison and InnoGrit next-generation solid state drive platforms and preferred to stick with Marvell controllers, but they were lagging behind the competition.
Now, SSSTC and Kioxia will focus strictly on the solid state drive market for enterprise, data center and industrial applications rather than the consumer market. The Plextor website already redirects visitors to the SSSTC.com website, it no longer lists disks for computers/clients. Current Plextor SSD owners will still receive warranty support and RMA services, but no new Plextor-branded storage units will be released. In its 30-year history, Plextor has associated its name primarily with high-quality and durable CD/DVD optical disc players/writers and later with high-performance SSD drives.
However, as happened with OCZ after its acquisition by Toshiba, the name Plextor will now pass into the history closet. But as has been proven countless times in the rapidly evolving technology industry, the survival of companies is directly linked to their ability to adopt new cutting-edge technologies.
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