Flash swamps hard drives in consumer market

Angus Kidman
Sunday, 07 January 2007 05:18

Business IT - Technology

Despite lower capacity and higher prices, flash memory will continue to outpace hard drives in consumer technology equipment, market research suggests.

It's widely recognised that hard disk technology delivers more storage capacity for the dollar, and dominant consumer products such as the iPod have built much of their initial success on high-volume hard drive storage. Nonetheless, storage analysts speaking at the Storage Visions conference in Las Vegas agree that flash is likely to be the dominant storage format for consumer devices for the foreseeable future

"Hard drives had a dominant unit share in digital audio players 12 months back, but what's happened is that flash has overtaken the market," said Ross Rubin, director of consumer technology industry analysis for NPD.

In this context, it seems, capacity is less important than cuteness. "In the portable space, it's a challenge for hard drives to compete because there's such a focus on the sleek, fashionable aspect of those devices," Rubin said.

While flash memory may dominate in consumer devices like MP3 players and mobile phones, price and capacity limits mean it's unlikely to outstrip hard drives altogether. A pricing comparison by Jim Handy of Objective Analysis suggests that while capacity on flash drives continues to grow while prices increase, hard drives are following a similar trajectory.

"There will always be a hard disk drive in the PC," Handy said. "Flash will not take that over, but it has a chance of getting past all the other removable media."

Not all market watchers agree. "Flash, while certainly talked about, is still a small percentage of the total number of units," said Sean Wargo, director of industry analysis at the Consumer Electronics Association.

Once a capacity of more than 4GB is desirable, compact hard drive formats become an equally viable option, Handy said. "The one-inch hard drive does extremely well once you've reached the limit where flash can't compete."

In some markets, though, flash is continuing to make headway. "The capacity points required for very high-quality audio are actually quite low," said Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates. Handy suggests that high-capacity flash is a better backup option for ultraportable notebooks than optical drives.

The battle between flash and hard drives may not result in one being vanquished. "The growth of one type of storage device does not negate the growth of other types," Coughlin said.