Sony cuts Memory Stick pricing!
By
Mike Tomkins
(Tuesday, January 29, 2002 - 10:20 EST)
Second price reduction in six months brings Sony's memory format down to as little as 70¢/MB...
Sony Corp. has announced a price cut of 17 - 40% across its lineup of Memory Stick flash memory cards, Reuters reports. The price adjustment (Sony's second in six months) brings Memory Stick pricing down to between 70¢ and $3.11/MB, depending on the capacity purchased.
Sony's Memory Stick media is also sold by Lexar (who manufacture the cards themselves) and SanDisk (who sell rebadged Sony-manufactured cards at the current time). Both companies have apparently matched Sony's move with similar price cuts.
The new pricing for Memory Stick media, effective as from the end of last week, is as follows:
| Capacity | Was | Now | Reduction | Cost/MB | | 128MB | | | $149.95 | $89.95 | 40% | 70¢ | | 64MB | | | $79.95 | $49.95 | 38% | 78¢ | | 32MB | | | $49.95 | $34.95 | 30% | $1.09 | | 16MB | | | $34.95 | $24.95 | 29% | $1.56 | | 8MB | | | $29.95 | $24.95 | 17% | $3.11 |
Reuters' article noted that Secure Digital cards sell at prices from $30 for a 16MB card to $150 for a 128MB card by comparison. A fairer comparison, however, might be to the Memory Stick's main competitors - CompactFlash or SmartMedia cards (rather than the much less-common Secure Digital format). At the time of this writing, a quick search revealed both 128MB CompactFlash and SmartMedia cards available at a reputable retailer (Buy.com) for $54.95 (43¢/MB), whilst Lexar-branded 128MB Memory Sticks at the same retailer were $69.95 (55¢/MB) and Sandisk-branded 128MB 'Sticks were $63.95 (50¢/MB).
One question does spring immediately to mind, however - why on earth would anybody buy an 8MB Memory Stick when 16MB Memory Sticks now retail for exactly the same price?
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