Memory Cards Matching Increasing Demand in UK

Memory Card developments have continued to keep pace with the requirements of the hardware they service, according to a report from GfK Retail and Technology. For many years, increased pixel counts have resulted in an ever greater requirement for storage – both on board the Camera and also on Home Computers or Online Portals.

SD Cards are currently the chosen format for the majority of cameras and around three-quarters of Memory Card sales are SD Card format, with Compact Flash and Memory Stick holding the remainder of the market. An ever increasing percentage of SD Card sales are accounted for by SD High Capacity Cards and the current trend for HD Video to be included as a feature on high-end Cameras has led to the launch of a number of high read/write speed Cards able to cope with the required high transfer speeds.

With favoured capacities changing every few months, it is interesting to see that in the space of the past six months the most popular capacity for a Memory Card has doubled from 1GB to 2GB. 2GB cards, which in September 2008 had an average selling price of around £15, now account for over 40% of total value sales within Memory Cards in the UK.

Looking at the even higher capacities, there is a jump of around £5 in purchase price for a 4GB card, and then a further £5 for an 8GB card, both of which have rapidly increased their market share in recent months. However, looking at the total market gives only a snapshot of the difference in price between online and offline sales of memory cards – and online sales have always been substantial in this sector. The online price for a 2GB card is around £11, with offline sales priced substantially higher at around £16, a difference in price of nearly 50%. It’s for this reason that online sales currently account for one-quarter of all memory cards sold in the UK.