Sandisk most favoured flash memory vendor in India

New Delhi, Nov 28 : As India's consumer storage flash memory market recorded 33 per cent growth in the third quarter this year, SanDisk with 51 per cent market share held the top slot as the most favoured vendor followed by Strontium and Sony in terms of unit shipments.

SanDisk shipments witnessed 67 per cent growth as compared to the last quarter and was the major growth driver for the pen drive category, a report from Cybermedia Research (CMR) said on Tuesday.

The overall market, comprising Micro-SD cards, SD cards and flash drives, witnessed a 29 per cent decline (on year-on-year comparison) in terms of units shipped.

"Micro-SD cards market will find additional life in shape of 4G feature phones as they have limited inbuilt memory with potential of heavy data usage," Narinder Kumar, Lead Analyst, CyberMedia Research, said in a statement.

"The recent trend of bundled mobile handsets at subsidised prices from telecom operators to counter RJIO's JioPhone in entry level mobile handset segment will further add to Micro SD card base. Reducing price gap between normal pen drives and OTG pen drives will boost the adoption of latter," Kumar added.

In Micro SD segment as well, SanDisk remained the top contributor with 38 per cent market share and its shipments witnessed 81 per cent growth when compared to the last quarter.

Strontium maintained its second position and Samsung was at the third spot in terms of unit shipments. Shipments of Unbranded Micro SD declined by 18 per cent when compared to the last quarter.

SanDisk also remained the top contributor with 65 per cent when it comes to flash drives as well. Sony was at second position and Strontium captured the third spot in terms of unit shipments.

Among the top 10 flash drive models, SanDisk's 'Cruzer Blade (SDCZ50)' and 'Ultra Dual Drive (SDDD3)' were the most favoured models.

USB 3.0 Flash Drives market witnessed a rising trend. Its market share grew from 10 per cent in second quarter to 17 per cent in third quarter.

The report also noted that 16GB capacity flash drives were major contributor with 37 per cent market share of the overall flash devices market.

According to Shipra Sinha, Analyst, Consumer Storage Flash Memory Market, availability of several apps for watching movies and other entertainment shows online and downloading videos will require additional Internal memory.

"This will further drive the growth of Micro-SD cards market in the near future. Going forward, the market will further witness a shift towards higher capacity segments because of all major vendors implementing 3D flash technology in their manufacturing process."