Vista, New Apps Set to Heat Up Memory Market

A slew of new RAM-guzzling applications and a growing community of graphics professionals and gaming enthusiasts are expected to push the demand for memory to the roof in the year to come.

Another major development that is likely to impact memory consumption is the transition to Windows Vista, as it will stretch the entry level in memory to 1 gigabyte. Many in the industry say that the trend shifted towards buying higher capacity machines in the third quarter of this year itself. "By mid-2007, consumers would have adopted 1 GB entirely," observes Rajesh Panicker, country manager, Kingston Technology.

Players in the memory market are evidently experiencing rise in demand for memory products and upgraded versions of memory drives and flash drives, thanks to newer graphics-intensive applications, blackberry and mobile video. These and other applications demand faster performance and availability of products with multiple memory slots. Experts also believe that flash products are now fast accepted as portable storage devices rather than traditional storage media.

With the CPU prices plunging, end-users now have more money to spend on memory, second in priority to the CPU.

The motherboards too have shifted to DDR2; in addition, there is a rise in online gaming, HiFI music and need for better PC performance. "This," explains Panicker, "translates into more opportunity for partners to get better margins and the supply has gone steady too with assured revenue."