The data for these charts is taken in half yearly samples, one in March and the other in September, if possible, and it records the best price found of each different size of flash memory in the magazine or web site. There are a large variety of types of flash cards, for example, Compact Flash, Secure Digital, Memory Stick and Kodak Memory Card. No distinction has been made of which type of flash memory was used in obtaining the cheapest price although in most years until recently, Compact Flash had price/capacity lead over the other types. Thumb drives are also available for consideration in the survey and theoretically are not the cheapest way to purchase flash memory as they have to sold with interface parts as well, but strangely they are currently the cheapest way to buy flash memory probably due to volume sales. I have made a FAQ for people that have questions about my methodology for this study.
Improvement In Bang Per Buck
Flash memory products made their first appearances in APC magazine advertisements in the 1st half of 99 as an accessory for digital cameras. Immediately during their first year they showed dramatic price improvements and have continued to do so ever since.
The graph is a bit lumpy but is shows a continuously improving trend. The average for the entire 8 years is 150% improvement each year. This handily beats out the 8 year trend for hard disks which this site measured at 90% per annum.
The short term trend is more interesting, especially when compared with recent the recent trend for hard disks. The 4 year improvement for flash comes in at 185% whereas for hard disks over the same period the figure is only 45%. This is an ominous trend for hard disks because if it continues we could see an end to their general use as the primary storage device on most computers.
Annual Sweet Spot Capacity Increases
The sweet spot is defined here as the size of the flash storage card that has the best Meg per $ figure for any half year sample. Like hard disks but unlike RAM, most people only use one flash card at a time. For example, a person can have several flash storage cards but because the camera they use the cards in will only use one at a time it is much more common to own just the one card.
Please be aware of the logarithmic scale used on this chart. The trend has been an average 100% increase per year with no recent signs of any slow down.
You can find the 2006 version of this page here.