New Delhi / Gurgaon, June 30, 2014:  8 Gigabytes is the post popular size  for flash based storage in the Indian consumer market, finds CyberMedia Research.  The overall market for consumer Micro SD cards, SD cards and Flash drives, registered an impressive sequential growth of 19% in the first quarter of 2014, recording 19.7 million unit shipments.

SanDisk maintained its market leadership with 35% market share by unit shipments. Transcend was at second spot, followed by Kingston at third spot during the quarter

The 8 GB capacity segment remained the favourite SKU, contributing 37% of overall unit shipments, and registering a sequential growth of 16% in 1Q CY 2014. The 2 GB capacity segment whose market share by shipments had declined over the past two quarters turned around in 1Q CY 2014 with a 28% sequential growth.Major vendors had gradually vacated the 2 GB space and moved towards higher capacity offerings
However, this quarter (1Q CY 2014) saw a surge in shipments of 2 GB capacity offerings from unbranded players in the Micro SD cards category, mainly due to stability in prices over the last two quarters. Collective shipments from these unbranded players grew by a steep 76% in 1Q CY 2014, as compared to the previous quarter“
Currently, the India mobile handsets market has a large segment of sub-Rs. 2,000 devices with memory slots. These phones don’t come bundled with memory cards. This segment of mobile handset users is the most likely target of unbranded players, who are concentrated mainly in Tier-II and smaller cities”,  said Narinder Kumar Narinder Analyst, InfoTech and Channels Practices, CyberMedia Research

Source: CMR’s India Quarterly Consumer Storage Flash Memory Market Review, 1Q CY 2014, June 2014 release.