Sony Memory Stick price cuts, new products
By
Mike Tomkins
(Thursday, April 10, 2003 - 05:17 EDT)
Sony Electronics has added a couple of new products to its Memory Stick lineup, and reduced prices on the rest of the range, according to a news item we read today.
Our friends at Steve's Digicams noted that the Sony 1GB Memory Stick Pro card is now available from Sony Style's website at a cost of $639.99 (62¢ / MB), whilst a 256MB Memory Stick Select card (which has two banks of 128MB that must be manually selected by removing the card from your camera and physically flicking a switch) is available for $134.99 (53¢ / MB). The existing 128MB Memory Stick card now costs $69.99 (55¢ / MB), a 64MB card costs $49.99 (78¢ / MB), and a 32MB card costs $29.99 (94¢ / MB).
It seems that the "sweet spot" for Memory Stick pricing is now the 256MB Select card by a very slight margin, but it remains to be seen whether users will find the 2¢ / MB difference sufficient to account for the fact that they still have to remove the card from their camera after 128MB of photos, and now have a moving part (the microswitch) that can potentially wear out.
We definitely agree with Steve on one point - 1GB Memory Stick pricing will need to come down a *long* way if Sony wants to be competitive with other media formats. CompactFlash users have long had access to 1GB cards, and could literally purchase three name-brand 1GB CompactFlash cards for the price of the single 1GB Memory Stick. NewEgg.com currently lists a SanDisk 1GB CompactFlash card for just $215 (21¢ / MB) inclusive of free shipping, and we frequently hear from readers telling of similarly priced CompactFlash memory...
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