SSD's use flash memory, or NAND flash, so basically they're saying SSD's are the future.
I've got to admit, the storage density race has been very quiet the last year with regard to mechanical drives, the only noteworthy point was the 1TB 2.5" drive, even though it was a 12.5mm drive rather than a standard 9.5mm. 2TB drives are still not as cost effective as 1TB drives, but getting there, maybe the 3's will push them down when they start coming out.
After perpendicular storage, there's development with heat and laser based drive heads that could increase densities further, which can be
read up at Ars. Both storage types have they're advantages, but it would appear that our long standing mechanical brethren are hitting a wall with 2D storage. It's a shame that 3D/holographic storage is still in it's infancy and not commercially viable on a consumer level. Most of which is based on Magneto optical drives or WORM (Write Once Read Many) as it were back in the 80's. We've already got multi layered media, like 4 and 8 layer BD's, but they are still 2D, it's like combining multiple platters on a hard drive. Real 3D storage is a long way off and the only example i've seen of that was with a laser lattice array using diamonds and super cooled cesium or something in some weird quantum storage example, rearranging molecules to form patterns that could be read and interpreted by an electron microscope, hardly mainstream.
