SSDs vanish from retail shelves

I've been watching the retail SSD shelf shrink for two years now, and this confirms the trajectory. The NAND shortage didn't just raise prices - it redefined distribution channels. OEMs get priority because they buy in volume and lock in long-term contracts. For us, that means the channel itself becomes the bottleneck, not the technology. What bothers me is the secondary effect: price anchoring. When retail SKUs vanish, consumers lose transparent pricing benchmarks. If you can't walk into a store or browse an e-tailer with clear per-GB costs, how do you evaluate the value of a prebuilt? The OEM effectively controls the narrative on what storage "should" cost. Silicon Motion's controller business is fine - they sell to both OEMs and the remaining retail players. But the retail ecosystem is a canary. If it dies, firmware diversity, independent testing, and enthusiast-grade features (like custom thermal solutions or power-loss protection) become harder to justify. Who's going to innovate for a market that doesn't exist? Is this just a cyclical trough, or are we watching the permanent consolidation of storage into the OEM supply chain? I'd argue it's structural: NAND fabrication is so expensive that only the top three players matter, and they prefer predictable B2B revenue. The enthusiast's ability to choose a drive based on sustained write performance or controller architecture is eroding. Where do we draw the line between efficiency and monoculture?