The removable storage market, which covers a range of magnetic rigid disk drives, floppy disk drives, optical disk drives, and cards using semiconductor flash memory technology, generated $3bn in sales revenue during 1996 and is set to grow to $4.3bn by 2000, according to Mountain View, California-based storage specialists, Disk/Trend. The fastest growing area in removable storage over the next three years is expected to be flash cards as the industry responds to expanding market opportunities. The use of flash memory in new products such as digital cameras and personal telecommunications equipment is expected to boost total shipments of flash cards five-fold from 3.6 million units this year to 15.1 million units in 2000. Another booming area is forecast to be removable floppy disk storage, driven largely by the success of the high capacity Zip drive launched by Iomega in 1995, and by the emergence last year of the LS-120 drive, a technology backed by several companies including Imation and Compaq. Shipments of high capacity floppy disk drives jumped to 3.9 million units in 1996, and Disk/Trend estimates that this will reach 26.6 million units by 2000. However, the success of high capacity floppy disk drives, combined with demand for rigid disk drives such as the Iomega Jaz drive, will ultimately have an adverse effect on sales of small optical disk drives, which are expected to peak in 1999 before declining to 1.8 million units.
