I’ve written a lot about the amazing trends in hard drive storage, but similarly trends are also finally starting to occur in flash memory storage.
I have a number of portable devices — mostly cameras and PDAs — that use Secure Digital cards. The problem with SD cards was that, until this year, they topped out at a maximum 512mb. That changed in January 2004 when Sandisk finally introduced the first 1 gb SD card.
The only problem was that the 1gb SD cards were expensive. They hit retail outlets at in the $349-$399 range initially. When I bought a new digital camera in June I paid $270 for a 1 gb card at the local photo store.
Today, just five months later, that same store is selling 1 gb cards for $109. You can pick them up online at a number of places for less than $80. That’s just slightly above the price point for 1 gb Compact Flash cards which have been available for around $70 for many months (but I prefer devices that use SD because the cards are so much smaller, so the devices tend to be smaller and carrying 5 or 6 extra cards is relatively easy).
Having 1 gb flash cards is extremely liberating. I turn on my 3 megapixel camera and it informs me that it has room for approximately 619 photographs or almost 25 minutes of video at 30fps and 320×240. This is the first time I’ve ever had a camera where I’ve gotten tired of taking photographs before running out of film or memory.
On the PDA, that means space to store programs, pictures and take along a few hundred books and assorted reference materials as well.
And such storage is only going to get larger and cheaper. SanDisk announced last month that beginning in November it will begin selling a 2 gb SD Ultra II card (the “Ultra II” designation means it can write at speeds up to 9mb/second). Initial retail price — just $240. That should further drive down the price of the 1 gb card, and hopefully the price of the 2 gb card wil fall as quickly as for that of the 1 gb card.