With the growing amount of digital data and increased need for mobility in our daily lives, the

demand for
portable storage devices has been continuously on the rise. Almost all market reports in recent times
suggest an upswing in the use of storage peripheral devices like flash/pen drives, flash memory cards
and sticks, external hard disks, MP3/MP4 players and digital cameras. These products have created a
huge market pull, so much so that even the global slodown couldnt hamper their growth story. The total
Indian storage peripheral market in FY10 has been pegged at Rs 2,676 crore, a growth of 36% over the
previous fiscalclearly indicating the heavy commoditization of the devices.

Its all about Flash Drives

Over the last five years flash memory has been gaining overwhelming popularity as the new age storage
medium replacing the traditional magnetic and optical storage devices. Portability, ease of use and
mobility are the key factors that have made these the darlings of the consumers. Today a USB or flash
drive has gone beyond being just data storage devices to becoming lifestyle devices.

  CyberMedia Research DQ
Estimates

These products might have

become exceedingly
commoditized, but the
shrinking parallel import and
gray market led to a high
overall growth

The flash drive market is one of the fastest growing segments in India. The reduced and the more flexible
duty structure introduced by the Government of India during the 2008 Budget has further boosted the
growth as well as helped to stabilize the ASP (Average Selling Price) of the devices. This has further
helped to clean up the market by virtually erasing parallel imports of these products, which until a year
back formed a large chunk of the market; in addition to the business generated through the authorized
distributors.

The flash drive market in India saw modest growth of 16% last fiscal and revenues of Rs 576 crore. FY10
proved to be a great year for Kingston, which had a healthy business growth and dominated the market
with 35% share. Transcend, on the other hand, has remained more or less stagnant but maintained its
previous performance by securing 32% share in the flash drive market. Although the end customer pull for
Transcend in the flash market is still high, Kingston seems to have gained control through a more
organized business approach as well as regular product availability. In terms of products, both brands
gave tough competition to each other by launching new models of USB drive with latest designs and
features to attract all customer segments. With 25% share, Sandisk is the sure winner in this product
category. The company maintained its style of introducing innovative and stylish products while
embracing aggressive marketing activities that helped Sandisk to secure an impressive growth rate.

Demand for high capacity pen drives continued to grow as the most popular entry level product today is 4
GB drive followed by 8 GB and 16 GB. However, pull for further high capacity pen drives declined due to
the increased popularity of external hard drives. Another predominant trend witnessed in this product
category, alongside technology upgradation and enhanced aesthetics and flashy designs, is introduction
of new and innovative features like bio-metric, high speed, thinner and smaller sized pen drives. To attract
buyers brands like Dell and Transcend came out out with newer concepts. While Dell launched pen drives
with pre-loaded movies, Transcend introduced models with pre-loaded anti-virus.

  CyberMedia Research DQ
Estimates

The key development last

fiscal was the complete control
on feed from grey or parallel
import as branded players took
over sales through their
authorized distributors. This
created a huge gap in the
market, opening new business
opportunities for the vendors.
While Transcend and Kingston
maintained their usual
business flow, it was Sandisk
which emerged as the winner

Flash Cards on the Rise

With the rise in mobile phone adoption in India, the market for flash memory cards has been witnessing
exponential growth. As use of multimedia applications like music, video, pictures, games in multimedia
handsets are increasing, the consumption of MMC and Micro SD cards are growing tremendously.
Increased use of smartphones is another factor driving the growth of flash cards in addition to the growing
insurgence of cheaper Chinese handsets in India, being launched by local brands and fully loaded with
high end multimedia features and applications like gaming, music, pictures and social networking.

  CyberMedia Research DQ
Estimates

Unlike the flash drive market,

parallel import got a boost in
flash card business due to
growing insurgence of loose
cards in the Indian market
driven by increased mobile
penetration and easy
availability and rising
popularity of cheap multimedia
handsets. The market
witnessed sharp growth last
fiscal. While both Kingston and
Transcend lost some of their
market share, it was Sandisk
again which captured greater
share of the pie

This has automatically catapulted the demand for higher capacity flash cards and the minimum entry level
card available in the market is 2 GB. One of the biggest trend for this product category in the past year is
the growing demand for unbranded flash cards that are now available in the Indian market, primarily fed
from Taiwan. With growing local and cheap mobile handset usage, the demand for these lose cards has
gone up tremendously. These local brands provide high capacity lose cards bundled with their handsets
which are basically use and throw products with limited shelf life. This has led to greater consumption of
these cards as they are purchased in large quantities to replace the damaged cards. These cards enter
India primarily through parallel import and hence, unlike the dying gray market for pen drives, the gray or
parallel import business of flash cards has flourished all the more and captured 25% of the market.
With mobile penetration growing rapidly even in the upcountry markets in India, the market for flash
memory cards has grown at a greater pace. The market size for these devices in FY10 is pegged at Rs
480 crore with a 33% growth rate. Transcend and Kingston are the two leading vendors with 25% share
each, while Sandisk captured 15% of the market, a substantial jump over the previous fiscal.

When Portability is the Fashion

Need for high capacity mobile storage devices has further driven the demand for portable or external hard
drives. The prices of these devices has also reduced drastically over the last one year making them more
affordable, hence ready for mass consumption. These factors are supportive enough to justify the strong
growth that this product segment has witnessed in FY 10. With a growth rate of close to 25% Q-on-Q, the
external hard drive market in India made Rs 270 crore last fiscal (a 73% growth). With ASP of these
devices dropping to Rs 3,200, the external hard drives are already posing a serious threat to high
capacity pen drives.

The 2.5 inch range of portable hard drives are the most in demand and contribute 90% of business to the
market, while 3.5 inch drives make up the remaining. In the entry level, the most saleable products were
those belonging to 250 GB and 320 GB capacities while on the higher range the most popular models
were with 1TB in 2.5 inches and 1 TB and 2 TB in 3.5 inches. While Seagate maintained its market lead
last fiscal as well, Western Digital too remained firm with its business. Jointly they held 65% of the total
external hard drive market in India. The other key players include Transcend, Buffalo and Iomega.

As demand for these devices increase, competition between vendors is steaming up. Even a PC brand
like HP has launched its own range of portable hard drives and others like Dell and Acer are gearing up to
enter the market soon. To beat competition, vendors are not only launching a variety of models with
attractive looks but are introducing products with new features like bio-metrics, bundled software, auto
back-up, one touch back-up, anti-shock among others.

CyberMedia
  Research     DQ Estimates

FY10 witnessed substantial

drop in prices of external hard
drives pushing the sales of
these devices furthermore.
With over 70% growth rate, the
portable hard disk market
looks to be the most exciting
market among all storage
peripheral devices. And with
PC brands entering the
market, the future looks more
exciting in terms of technology
innovation as well as market
trends

Music Mantra
Digital MP3 players have been a definite hit with the Indian music lovers and has reigned the market in
the recent past. Features like portability, impeccable features, ease of use have been the key reasons
behind the rapidly growing popularity of these products. With technology upgradation, the past one year
has witnessed enhanced sale of MP4 players. With a growth of 23%, the MP3/MP4 player market in India
is currently pegged at Rs 290 crore.

CyberMedia
  Research     DQ Estimates

With mobile handsets offering

enriched MP3/MP4 features,
the market for standalone
MP3/MP4 players took a little
hit last fiscal. However, iPod
continued to dominate the
market, Sony lost its business
to brands like Transcend and
Sandisk which clocked
substantial growth
The key players in this segment are Sony, Trandscend and Sandisk, each with 15% market share.
However, the leader in this segment is none other than the revolutionary Apple iPod which dominates the
personal music system place with 45% market share. iPod continued to introduce sleek, attractive and
vibrant models in all its ranges starting from Shuffle to Nano and the ultimate feature-rich Touch series
which is a users delight.

However, with mobile handset makers like Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and local brands like
Micromax, Lava, Wyncomm offering superior MP3/MP4 features in their handsets, the standalone
MP3/MP4 player market has started to face competition. Technology innovation will definitely play a
pivotal role towards sustaining their markethold in future.

Happy to Click
The digital camera market in India has grown by leaps and bounds in the past five years and is still
counted as one of the most promising and rapidly growing products in India. Fascination for digital quality
clarity and superior audio, video and picture quality coupled with technology innovations and price
reduction has made it one of the hottest electronic gadgets among Indian consumers.

Maintaining its fastrack growth, the digital camera market in India recorded 47% increase in business.
Sony with its varied range of digital compact and digital SLR cameras was the market leader in FY10 with
42% share in the total market pie of Rs 1,060 crore. Kodak was the second largest replacing Canon, and
captured 20% share. Canon too didnt lag behind and remained a close competitor with 18% market
share. While Nikon stagnated with 6% share, Samsung gained a lot of traction with 8% market share.

Its not only the urban population that is getting hooked to a digital lifestyle, the tier-1 and -2 cities are also
becoming lucrative business destinations for digital product vendorsand digicam is no exception. Almost
all major players in this category are strengthening their product portfolio and are coming out with new
and feature-rich models at regular intervals and with India specific pricing. Todays digicams are not only
sleek and attractive but are loaded with high capacity in-built memory. They are also bundled with high
capacity memory cards, better battery life, easy maneuvering features and intelligent functionalities,
promising more power to the consumer.

The Capital of India, Delhi takes the cake for doing maximum shopping on Ebay and their
favourite item to buy is Diamond Rings, while Diamond Jewellery is the one which is sold
maximum by Delhiites!

The Top 10 Ranking cities for Ebay Transactions

1. Delhi
2. Mumbai
3. Jaipur
4. Chennai
5. Bengaluru
6. Hyderabad
7. Ahmedabad
8. Kolkata
9. Chandigarh
10. Pune
Lets us look at what some of the top cities buy and sell

Cities Top 5 Products Sold Top 5 Products Bought

Delhi 1. Diamond Jewellery 1. Diamond Rings
2. Mobile Handsets 2. Mobile Handsets
3. Women’s Wrist 3. Pen Drives
Watches 4. Gemstones
4. Diamond Rings 5. Wrist Watches
5. Sewing Machines

Mumbai 1. Diamond Rings 1. Mobile Handsets

2. Mobile Handsets 2. Books
3. Natural Gemstones 3. Diamond Rings
4. Women’s Wrist 4. Indian Coins
Watches 5. Pen Drives
5. Sewing Machines

Jaipur 1. Salwar Suits 1. Solitaire Pendants

2. Necklaces & Pendants 2. Artistic Earrings
3. Antique Books 3. Fashionable Rings
4. Home Furnishing 4. Pen Drives
5. Indian Stamps 5. British India Coins

Chennai 1. Indian Coins 1. Mobile Handsets

2. Pen Drives 2. Pen Drives
3. Mobile Handsets 3. British India Coins
4. Remote Controlled 4. Books
Toys 5. Special Stamps
5. Indian Stamps

Bengaluru 1. Indian Stamps 1. Mobile Handsets

2. Books 2. Indian Stamps
3. Asian Currency Notes 3. Pen Drives
4. Pen Drives 4. Books
5. Embroidered Sarees 5. Home Theatre System
Accessories

Hyderabad 1. Books 1. Mobile Handsets

2. Emergency Lamps 2. Books
3. Telugu Movies 3. USB Drives
4. Gold Plated Bangles 4. Indian Coins
5. Sewing Machines 5. Diamond Rings
Did you see that products sold in different cities in India does not really show much resemblance
to each other. While Books are sold maximum in Hyderabad, Chennai tops for Indian coins.
Bengaluru sells Indian stamps while for Delhi it is Diamond Jewellery