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SanDisk breaks the $10 Price Barrier!
Dennis Hissink : September 18th 2004 - 07:23 CET
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 Delivering on its previously announced strategy to grow the consumable market for flash memory cards, SanDisk Corporation has introduced new, lower prices for its Shoot & Store line of flash storage cards that are sold in supermarkets, drug stores and other mass-merchant outlets. Effective August 30 in the U.S. market, the 50-photo (32-megabyte) card, priced previously at $14.99, now has a suggested retail price of $9.99. The price of a 100-photo (64MB) Shoot & Store card has been reduced from $24.99 to $14.99. These price changes are being applied throughout the Shoot & Store product lineup, which consists of CompactFlash, SD, Memory Stick PRO and, in the next 30 days, xD-Picture Card (in 32MB capacity).
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 Shoot & Store, introduced in February, is aimed at consumers who want the convenience of leaving their flash cards with professional photo finishers or who don't want to download images to a computer or a disk. In the U.S. alone, this line of affordable cards is currently sold in more than 10,000 stores.
"Reaching the under-$10 price point without sacrificing picture capacity is a milestone achievement in SanDisk's effort to grow the market for flash media," said Stephen Baker, director of industry analysis with The NPD Group, a market research company that tracks retail trends. "Consumer-friendly price points such as these take a lot of the anxiety out of buying camera memory for many buyers and give them the opportunity to store their pictures in a safe, convenient environment." Finally, he added, the growth in low-cost flash memory "nicely dovetails with the industry's drive to take the PC out of the process for digital consumers by allowing them to view, print and now store their digital pictures without the need to rely on a PC."
Kent Perry, SanDisk product marketing manager for the Shoot & Store line, said, "We believe that $9.99 will be the magical price point for consumers to start adopting flash cards in a 'consumable' usage pattern that is quite similar to the way people have used 35 millimeter film negatives before the advent of digital cameras or personal computers. The Shoot & Store card allows consumers to capture digital images in their digital cameras, erase unwanted pictures and permanently store the best images on the cards. Consumers can then drop their cards for regular prints at most one-hour print centers and keep the pictures stored permanently as 'negatives' on the cards."
He added, "With these prices, digital flash memory is competitive with analog film in many channels, such as drug and food stores, and we expect it to have growing popularity at checkout counters in numerous convenience outlets. SanDisk was able to achieve this important price point because of our unique vertical integration model for manufacturing these cards as well as our economies of scale through very high-volume production." |
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