Hmm, I'd agree with you loosely. However the "top end" products don't end up directly as mainstream. They get cut down a little, a few expensive features get dropped etc. For Vertex though I think it will eventually end up as a mainstream product. It's not a motherboard with quad SLI, or a graphics card that needs a coal furnace to power. It's an SSD with a good controller and cache.

I can't understand OCZ coming out with quite so many product lines on SSD. I can't see that continuing though. We're approaching the limits of what SATA can do, and cache only does so much good. Controller optimisation and waiting for the next controller (SATA 6GB or PCIe) is next. I expect the Summit is likely to be the last thing they bring to current controllers. I don't understand why they have both Solid and Core though, and why they have Vertex, Apex and Summit. But maybe they intend to drop Apex when Summit comes around, and maybe they intend to drop either Solid or Core when stock levels are depleted.

OCZ may be tiny fish compared to Chipzilla, but it's not just OCZ that are behind the products. It's the consortium behind their new controller Indilinx, and Samsung as well as OCZ. OCZ have the whole of the market to choose from when they put their specifications together, as far as I'm aware they don't even assemble them in house. When that's taken into consideration things look a bit better for OCZ. There's rather large advantages to outsourcing, if a product doesn't turn up like it should then you can dump the supplier, if a product suddenly becomes out of date the supplier gets dumped too. Personally all I care about is the drives I have on order. After that it's just a general hope that competition continues. I suspect in the same way that people hope AMD stay afloat to ensure Intel keep being pushed forward with CPUs. Competition is good for us consumers.