Growing interest in removable storage
Growing interest in removable storage
Gartner has reported that removable solid-state storage devices, such as flash cards and Universal Serial Bus flash devices, have become twice as popular this year as they were last year, because workers are become more mobile.
Revenue has leapt from $2.13 billion in 2002 to $4.25 billion in 2003, and the demand even exceeded the supply late last year, which meant that some people could not get hold of the components they needed.
The price of these devices also dropped late last year, providing a chance for customers to buy even higher capacity products.
In particular, the USB flash drives grew by 352 percent to $613.1 million in 2003, compared to $135.6 million in 2002.
Gartner believe that USB flash drives have become so popular because they provide a simple, convenient solution for customers who are interested in storing and transporting large amounts of data from one location to another through the use of the USB port.
Not only are they now seen as a replacement for the diskette drive, but they can also provide new functionality through software and hardware enhancements.
The top three manufacturers, SanDisk, Toshiba and Sony, still remained at the top of the list for selling the products. SanDisk has 26 percent of the flash card market, Toshiba has 15 percent and Sony has 11.9 percent.
SanDisk's CompactFlash memory cards can be used for desktop computers, handheld PCs and Palm PCs, with 256MB of memory capacity.
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