Storage Toolkit

Flash memory flares up

Richard Shim CNET News

Published: 16 Jan 2004 17:05 GMT

Another product dependent on portable media that has helped boost the removable flash memory card market is cellphones, especially those with built-in digital cameras. Cellphones made up about 24 percent of worldwide demand for cards, according to IDC. These devices were less popular in the United States and Europe. But in Asia, a camera built into a phone is nearly a standard feature, according to Jim Handy of research firm Semico Research, and that essentially requires a card slot for storing or sharing photos.

Handy added that the cameras in phones went from being able to take VGA (video graphics array) quality pictures to megapixel images.

He expects cellphones to become a bigger market for card makers in the US as manufacturers begin to add cameras to their phones, something that has already started to occur. Some manufacturers will come out with phone video cameras for the US in the first half of the year.

Other categories that will help to boost the card market are mini-digital camcorders and USB (universal serial bus) drives.

Mini-digital camcorders, such as the one that Panasonic executives demonstrated at CES this year, are expected to call for higher-capacity cards than cameras, because consumers are recording video instead of just still images.

The market for USB drives is just beginning to hit some significant growth as consumers look to the readers as a replacement for floppy disk drives.