BANGALORE, INDIA: It has not been a laudable period last year for the flash card vendors, going by the reports of market performance. A recent survey undertaken by iSuppli, reveals that the global flash memory card market plummeted by 15 per cent to US$7.8 billion during year 2008. iSuppli is a leader in technology value chain research and advisory services.

The declining market trend has also brought to the fore that three out of the top-five flash card vendors saw their market shares slide in 2008.

The iSuppli survey added that Toshiba remained the leader in even in a shrinking market, boasting of a commendable share growth. It has been pointed out that SanDisk and Toshiba bagged a combined 47.5 per cent share of the global flash card market in 2008, compared to 46.8 per cent in 200.

The pressure on the market notwithstanding, close to 270 million SecureDigital (SD) flash memory cards were shipped during year 2008, the survey found out. Of these, as many as 100 million were 2GB products.

Meanwhile, it was also recorded that microSD card shipments accounted for 397 million units last year, of which 128 million were 2GB cards followed by 131 million 1GB ones.

The survey went on to add that combined shipments of SD, miniSD and microSD cards stood at 700 million-plus units during year 2008. This in effect amounted to much more than the number of CF, MMC and MS cards shipped.