16
TWICE
12/03/2007
By The Numbers
Wal-Mart Is First In Sales At Retail Of Flash Memory
EL SEGUNDO, CALIF. — Wal-Mart was the largest seller of USB drives and flash-memory cards in the United States in the second quarter, according to a report from iSuppli. The discounter accounted for 20 percent of allflash-storagedevices sold at retail in the second quarter of the year, the researchfirmreported. Best Buy followed with 18 percent and Circuit City rounded out the top three with 7 percent of all Hash-storage sales. The average capacity for memory sold through Wal-Mart was 1GB, but the Bentonville dealer didn t have the lowest prices, nor did other discount retailers such as Costco. That honor went to online-only players like Buy. com and Amazon.com, the research firm said. Office-supply stores also beat the industry average price for flash, iSuppli said. Of the top 10flash-memoryretailers. Fry's Electronics "provides the best value to consumers" iSuppli reported. According to iSuppli, 118 million flash-memory cards will be shipped this year, growing to 243 million in 2011. U.S. shipments of USB flash drives will hit 64 million units in 2011, from 37 million this year. •
TV Shell Leaders Remain In Octeher: Repert
BY GREG TARR
SAN DIEGO — The TV display kingpins in shelf share continued to hold their positions in October as Samsung led brands in LCD TV placements, while Panasonic and Sony continued to ride atop the plasma TV and rear-projection categories, respectively, according to an October shelf-share scorecard from Current Analysis West, a company ofThe NPD Group. Despite the results, challengers continued to apply pressure below them throughout the month, as evidenced by Sony's big shelf gains in LCD TV, where it attained a 1.6 percentage point increase from its September numbers. Current Analysis West said. The gains were due primarily to the launch of nine new products in the channel, three of which saw placement with top mass merchants,...