Gartner Sees 38 Percent Flash Card Market Growth For 2003
September 11, 2003 (2:53 p.m. EST)
By Keith Ferrell, TechWeb News
Declining memory component prices won't slow revenue growth in the worldwide flash card market this year, research firm Gartner said Thursday.
In fact, lower NAND flash memory prices have prompted retail price-point drops that are fueling higher rates of consumer adoption of flash card technology, the company said. Based on first-half 2003 figures, Gartner projected a $2.75 billion global flash card marketplace, 38 percent larger than 2002's $1.99 billion.
Lower component prices have also made possible an increase in flash card capacity, further driving consumer enthusiasm for the devices, said Gartner analyst Joseph Unsworth..
“The [retail] sweet spot for flash cards in 2002 was 64 to 128 megabytes,” Unsworth said. “This year we're seeing the transition to 128 to 256 megabyte cards as the most popular size.”
The researcher expects capacity to continue to increase, with 512 megabyte flash cards projected as the most popular size by 2005.
In addition, market growth is being driven by both new and more demanding uses for flash storage, according to Gartner's “Worldwide Flash Card Market History and Forecast Trends, 2001-2007.”
Digital still cameras have been the primary drivers for the medium, with higher capacity cards being used to store either a larger number of photos or photos stored in higher resolution digital formats, which require more memory.
Unsworth said growing consumer interest in digital video recorders, with their even larger memory demands, could be a potential market-shaper in the next few years.
Even more important, he said, will be the adoption of next generation mobile phones.
“2.5G and 3G phones will bring a whole array of new capabilities including music clips and pictures, which require higher capacity flash cards,” Unsworth said. He pointed out that the technology has the added advantage of letting phone makers keep cost of manufacture and materials low. Smaller capacity cards can be bundled with the handset, letting consumers add capacity as desired.
