Why VARs should care about USB 3.0

Paul Hudson explains why he thinks the channel should actively work towards USB 3.0 adoption

USB 3.0 can help enable a smarter living and working environment for users. Yet adoption is slow because manufacturers are not producing USB 3.0-ready products quickly enough.

The most obvious benefit is its promised speed. A great example of where faster data transfer may be helpful is when backing up data. Speed might not seem important if you only back up items each day, but if you lose your data, you can restore it from the back-up storage faster.

Instead of being offline for four hours while the data is copied, it might only be an hour, which is invaluable for business.

Although USB 2.0 will not become redundant in the near future, I predict it will eventually be phased out as USB 3.0 is adopted. For the moment, USB 2.0 will still be used for items such as mice and keyboards, which only send small amounts of data. But, soon enough, they will be replaced.

A similar trend was seen with wireless networking - a slow start, but an inevitable move forward.

In my view, it is now up to the channel to pressure laptop and PC makers for products that provide USB 3.0 as standard.

Consumers will not want to open up their PC to install a circuit board to gain the USB 3.0 ports, nor will they want a 2cm ExpressCard protruding from their laptops. USB 3.0 needs to be an included feature and require no effort.

If adoption remains slow, vendors could be forced to sell their USB 3.0 drives at the same price as USB 2.0 devices. However, the higher price of producing USB 3.0 chips would begin to inflate the price of laptops and desktops. This is not a move that will benefit the consumer.

Another important factor is what Apple chooses to do. Apple is unclear whether it will adopt USB 3.0 at the expense of FireWire, which is much slower. However, due to the large consumer market for Apple, USB 3.0 would be an almost immediate adoption if it were to choose that option.

If the channel was to gently nudge the manufacturers, USB 3.0 could be widely adopted.

Paul Hudson is sales director for Northern Europe at Buffalo