Why is Illumina GA the biggest seller?

[gavin.oliver]

Hi,

From reaidng around it would seem that Illumina have approx 50% of the NGS market with the remainder being shared between the other big players.

My question is why?

So far as I can ascertain, the SOLiD machine (by current specs) is the most accurate, has the highest output, highest multiplexing abilities and is supported by a software development community.

Perhaps I'm being obtuse

If anyone can offer some insight it would be appreciated - I know I'm going to be asked the same question by my managemet and I don't currently have an answer.

Thanks in advance,

Gavin

[NextGenSeq]

Illumina beat SOLiD to market by about a year. Also, SOLiD's launch with version 1 was rocky with a lot of bugs. This caused some customers to return them and they've been playing catch up ever since.

[gavin.oliver]

Thanks a lot

On a similar note - why is the Roche 454 technology so highly published compared to the others (over 600 publications according to the website)?

Obviously it was first to market but are there other factors involved?

[GW_OK]

The 454 was first again by almost a year, plus it had/has the distinction of fairly long reads. It was doing 100bp when Illumina had 25.

[krobison]

Illumina also has longer reads, which for some applications is important. The true paired end protocol (in addition to mate pairs) is also valuable in some contexts.

Sanger Centre returning their SOLiDs couldn't have helped, as I do strongly believe there is a serious snowball effect -- the more a platform is used the more refinements and techniques that are developed, which means more people pick up the platform...

I'm told the workflow is a bit easier than 454 or SOLiD -- bridge PCR being less work than emulsion PCR, but have never gotten that close to either machine. Of course, Helicos has the simplest sample prep but that hasn't shot it to the top!

[frozenlyse]

So far as I can ascertain, the SOLiD machine (by current specs) is the most accurate, has the highest output, highest multiplexing abilities and is supported by a software development community.

On the software side, there were a lot more tools to handle Illumina data out there than colorspace data - that is evening out now.. Also Illuminas read lengths have always been far ahead of Solids

But mainly Illumina got into the market earlier so all the high impact publications we're in their camp, by the time Solid got into the market, the low-hanging fruit experiments were already done!

[gavin.oliver]

Thanks a lot for all the responses!

[rajeshr]

Last month BGI bought 128 Illumina machines. I heard that 454 is selling its GS Junior this year...

[fgh1124]

Last month BGI bought 128 Illumina machines. I heard that 454 is selling its GS Junior this year...

I have also heard this matter!

May be due to the principle of SOLiD more complex than the Illumina, and the chance to get error bases is greater.

[orctyr]

Last month BGI bought 128 Illumina machines. I heard that 454 is selling its GS Junior this year...

This information is exactly true. I heard that BGI will sequene 1000 species in next few years. That's the first step to get this goal.

[RockChalkJayhawk]

This information is exactly true. I heard that BGI will sequene 1000 species in next few years. That's the first step to get this goal.

Actually this is the new illumina HiSeq machines, which have a lot higher throughput.

[krobison]

I don't have hard numbers, but actually SOLiD generally claims better accuracy than Illumina. Anyone have any good, independent comparisons of the accuracy on the two platforms?

ABI just got an order for 100+ SOLiD 4s by a new non-profit, so they clearly are still in the game.

[NextGenSeq]

IMHO, the race for the cheapest genome means that next gen (and next next gen) sequencing is rapidly becoming a commodity. For anyone interested in making money in the field, the best way will be to provide informatics and interpretation of the massive amount of data generated. The platform won't matter in the least.