The on-board storage in these devices is predominately flash memory and with flash storage capacity poised to dramatically decline to less than $0.50 per GB in the near future due to technology advances combined with vastly expanded chip production compared to flash demand, we may well see 128 GB tablet computers available using flash memory within a year (thanks to Intel, Micron, Samsung, SanDisk and Toshiba). This level of storage capacity may be enough for many users (for now) and allow them to have a mix of on-board entertainment, business and personal content as well as application-based access to resources and services through the cloud.   This will also stimulate the use of more flash memory inside of computers, especially dual storage or hybrid storage configurations.

However the consumer electronics market is an evolutionary industry with many needs. So even with this level of on-board storage there will be power users who will like the additional local storage offered by products such as Seagate's GoFlex Satellite, Hitachi GST's G-Connect, Samsung's Smartlink orKingston's Wi-Drive. These external storage devices supply additional content through the local wireless network. In addition, the Seagate and Kingston products provide a mobile device for storage expansion with their own battery. In effect these devices provide personal cloud storage that remains under the user's control -something that is always a question for remote cloud storage.

On the other side of the communication channel with thin clients are the datacenters that support them (these are the physical manifestations of "the cloud"). These large facilities often have a full tier of digital storage including flash products for transactional storage, high performance as well as storage capacity oriented hard disk drives and even magnetic tape for content libraries and archives. These technologies are growing rapidly due to the introduction and use of LTSF LTO tape (from companies such as IBM, HP, Spectra Logic and For-A), higher capacity HDDs (now up to 4 TB capacity), new flash storage architectures that bring enough reliability to MLC flash to make it useful in many enterprise applications and thus dropping the cost of enterprise flash significantly.

Thin Client devices will explode in their capability and usefulness in the next decade. These devices will be a major factor in the development of new storage architectures and devices. These developments will impact storage systems and software as well as storage devices such as flash memory, hard disk drives, optical storage (such as Blu-ray) and magnetic tape. You can find out more about this impact and other developments on the use of digital storage at the 2012 Storage Visions Conference, January 8 & 9, 2012 in Las Vegas(www.storagevisions.com). At that show experts from many companies and analysts will explore these topics. The Theme of the 2012 Storage Visions Conference is "Heavy Storage for Thin Clients."