Mobile Phone Removable Media on the Rise

NPD: Anticipating more consumer demand for digital media storage and porting, carriers and manufacturers offer phones with removable media feature slots

Americans are increasingly looking to their mobile phones to perform functions beyond simple phone calls, so carriers are beginning to provide a removable-media option that helps them do just that. A growing number of mobile phones now come equipped with feature slots for removable media. These slots are designed to accept memory cards, which consumers can use to port music, video, photos and other digital media between their phones and other devices.

In much the same way that carriers and handset manufacturers introduced text-messaging functionality ahead of mainstream consumer demand, they are now anticipating consumers’ potential needs for more media storage. As with any new feature, however, if and or when consumers will actually follow the industry’s lead is an open question.

In the last year, the number of mobile phones sold with removable media slots has shot up more than 250 percent -- from 567 thousand phones in Q2 2005 to two million in Q1 2006. The industry expects to see a continued and sustained increase in phones sold with this feature, as manufacturers focus on anticipating consumer demand for more capacity for storing and transferring digital data

Removable media has moved from mostly high-end smartphones to more mainstream models, Strother noted. In the past you’d see this feature available on Palm Treos or Windows Mobile devices, but now removable media is showing up on more affordable phones, like Motorola’s E815, LG’s VX-8300 and Samsung’s A-950. The most popular removable media format in the first quarter of 2006 was microSD, which now comes installed in nearly half of all phones sold with removable media slots. The next leading format in Q1 2006 was miniSD, installed in 31 percent of removable-media phones.

Source: The NPD Group’s Mobile Phone Track information service Publ 20060618