Cellphone Removable Memory Card Capacities to Increase to 26GB by 2012

(Business News & Technology News, 4 Jul 2008)

Average capacity of a removable memory card for the cellphone market will grow exponentially over the next five years, at an average 120 percent per year, from 517MB (megabytes) in 2007 to 26GB (gigabytes) in 2012, according to a latest report on the cellphone removable memory card market by Strategy Analytics. The study also reveals that revenue from sales of removable memory cards for cellphones will grow from $4.8 billion in 2007 to almost $11.3 billion in 2012.

The report also concludes that card sales for cellphones totaled 535 million in 2007, up from 309 million in 2006, and are forecast to grow to 990 million in 2012. The 256MB card, which was the most common card sold in cellphones in the fourth quarter of 2007, will slowly lose share. In contrast, 4GB cards, which accounted for around 3 percent of all sales in the same period, will represent over 10 percent of cellphone card sales by Q4 2008.

"Card capacity growth in cellphones is being driven primarily by increased penetration of music players, megapixel cameras and office applications. This has resulted in a huge increase in the storage of music, video and email files on phones. This trend is expected to accelerate as demand continues to grow at well over 100 percent per year," notes Steve Entwistle, VP of the Strategic Technologies Practice at Strategy Analytics.

Stuart Robinson, Director of the Handset Component Technologies service, adds, "While the price per megabyte for cards is declining at around 60 percent per year, cellphone card capacity is doubling faster than at Moore's Law rates, resulting in a slight increase in the overall average price of cards."

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