Strategy Analytics says annual shipments of memory cards for mobile phones haven’t increased for the last couple of years, remaining flat at 444 million cards worldwide. However it anticipates an 11% growth in memory card sales next year – mainly due to increased handset sales – and reckons annual revenue from memory card sales for mobiles will treble from $3 billion in 2007, 2008 and 2009 to $9 billion (£5.5 billion) by 2013, representing an average 25% growth per year over the next five years.
Strategy Analytics estimates that the average card capacity will be 2.27GB for 2009 and will increase at an annual average rate of nearly 118% over the next five years, although the increase in embedded (built-in) memory capacity could then start to affect sales. The company says some smartphones could have over 1TB of built-in storage by 2015. [Press release]