Western Digital (WD) is a strong competitor in the SSD market alongside other major brands like Samsung and Crucial. Recently, they announced that they will cease production and sales of their SSDs, reaffirming a significant change in their business strategy.

This shift became official last week when the company completed a planned separation from its NAND product segment, ultimately spinning that portion into SanDisk. Thus, WD is shifting its focus solely to hard disk drives.

WD’s CEO, Irving Tan, expressed his vision for this transition: “Our legacy of delivering exceptional HDD technology has defined our brand for decades, and I’m thrilled about our commitment to enhancing storage solutions for our clients moving forward.”

For gamers particularly more inclined towards SSDs, this news signals the end of an era for WD’s product offerings. Many players held WD products in high regard, notably the WD Black SN850X, regarded as one of the best SSDs for gaming.

As WD navigates this restructuring, the actual SSDS production will not diminish. The flash memory operations were already transitioned to SanDisk last year thus the shift aligns strategically with a previously announced plan.