These devices provide direct attached storage that can be used to save user content, such as in a backup, to move content from place to place faster than a network allows or even for expanding the useful storage capacity for some common household devices such as some set top boxes or DVRs.
While there will be some all flash computers, buying a useful amount of storage capacity at an affordable cost for most users will require combining flash memory with HDDs, either as a hybrid HDD or in a dual storage configuration.
Thus affordable flash-based mobile devices will have limited storage capacity and are most useful for a use and delete or on-line access thin client use models.
Flash memory has played an important role in these mobile consumer devices because it is rugged, flash memory chips can be stacked to enable compact devices, it uses small amounts of battery power and enough storage capacity can be included to make these devices useful for some common tasks such as email and media playing.
Whether Chinese strategists have something useful to contribute analytically by looking through the lens of Sun Tzu or whether they have deluded themselves into accepting the capacity of information power to lift the fog of war remains to be seen.