By Huang Xin
In 2008, there has appeared an interesting phenomenon of teeter-totter in the mobile storage market. At the beginning, priority was given to individual clients in the flash drives market; but now, the procurement of industry clients has become the mainstream. In the market for mobile hard discs, where priority has been given to industry clients, individual clients increase in number obviously while industry clients decrease in number incessantly. Though mainstream consumption groups in respective markets are being exchanged, product characteristics are consistent: that is, to upgrade the capacity incessantly. "Till now, the mainstream capacity of flash drives has risen to 2G in 2008 while that of mobile hard discs to 160G." pointed out Huang Dan, an analyst at Consumer Electronics Industry Research Center, CCID Consulting Co., Ltd.
As shown by data from CCID Consulting, the sales volume of flash drives in the market in China amounted to 3,902,800 pieces with a year-on-year growth margin of 43.5 percent during the first quarter of 2008.
The great success at the very beginning of 2008 indicates that the flash drive market will embrace a year of splendors and development. On the one hand, the mainstream capacity of flash drives has risen to 2G; on the other hand, the price for a product with a mainstream capacity has decreased to less than RMB100 yuan while the profit margin has become rather thin. It can be said that it is the development of the flash drive market that requires manufacturers to accelerate product classification.
Industry clients have replaced individual clients as the mainstream user group of flash drives as their procurement accounted for 60 percent. One of the important reasons is the procurement of office products; especially, it has become popular at present that respective enterprises order products with their respective logos and make such products gifts to establish the image of an enterprise. That is the very important representation that flash drive products are becoming more classified in the market. Moreover, in allusion to genders, tastes, read-write speed and appearance, etc., flash drive products are becoming more and more classified and they are deviating from homogeneity.
During the first quarter of 2008, market shares of Lenovo's flash drive products increased by 270 percent year on year; and they were not lagging far behind aigo? flash disc products ranking No. 1 in terms of sales volume. For sure, Lenovo's success in the flash drive market is rooted in its advantage as a major brand and also, its advantages in terms of independent channels and Lenovo's resources in the information technology industry. As the Olympic Games is drawing near, Lenovo has launched a series of flash discs concerning the Olympic Games, including Fuwa flash drives and Torch flash drives. Such flash drive products classified in allusion to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have become main commodities in the market at present on basis of their design.
While the flash disc market witnessed a rapid growth, the sales volume of mobile hard discs with respective brands in the market all over China increased by 28.9 percent year on year to 506,900 pieces during the first quarter of 2008, and the growth margin had dwindled year on year. According to Huang Dan, main reasons for the fact that the growth margin in the mobile hard disc market was restricted during the first quarter of 2008 are that various industries have reduced their procurements during the off-season in the market and that hard disc products have assembled with a fake brand became prevalent once again.
Due to their large capacity, it is appropriate for mobile hard discs to be used for purposes of backup and transferring with a large capacity; so industry clients have been taken as the main user group. Nevertheless, the proportion of industry clients relatively dwindled and it has decreased to 60 percent for the moment as prices of mobile hard discs have been declining while individual users of mobile hard discs have increased substantially in 2008. Impacts of hard disc products assembled to market shares of various brands have been enhanced in 2008; as the capacity of mobile hard discs are augmenting increasingly, price gaps will be made even larger and the seesaw battles will be upgraded once again.
In addition, mobile hard disc products are also under the impacts from the flash drive market. Recently, Toshiba announced that it had successfully developed new flash disc products with their capacity ranging from 1GB to 8GB and products with a capacity of 32GB, which can meet the requirement for a large capacity and will be directly sold by Toshiba online; thus, the lineup of Toshiba's flash disc products with a universal serial bus (USB) was once again enforced. The distribution of such flash disc equipment with a large capacity will start early in the upcoming August, and it is expected that products with a capacity of 32GB will be launched in the market in the upcoming December. Thus, it is obvious that the relative advantage of mobile hard discs to flash drives is being lost gradually while the former will never exceed flash drives in terms of portability no matter how much they are contracted. Statistics obtained from a survey on main mobile storage equipments that consumers are using at present shows that in August 2007, the use rate of flash drives amounted to 78 percent, which is far more than 18 percent, that of mobile hard discs; the use rate of memory cards was 2 percent. Yet, 2 percent of consumers used storage equipments of other kinds.
