Panasonic cuts memory card pricing in U.S.

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By Martyn Williams

(IDG) -- Panasonic Consumer Electronics, a U.S. unit of Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial, has announced reductions in the price of its Secure Digital (SD) memory cards that bring them closer into line with the prices in Japan.

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Panasonic said Tuesday it will lower the U.S. minimum recommended retail price of the 64M byte SD card to $100 from $160, that of the 32M byte card to $60 from $100, and that of the 16M byte card to $40 from $70. In Japan, the same cards typically retail for 11,800 yen ($95), 6,480 yen ($52) and 3,880 yen ($31) respectively.

The new prices, which are also more in line with those of its competitors, are additionally falling as companies begin preparing to introduce higher capacity 128M byte SD cards later this year. Sandisk said it plans to launch its new card within the next two months at $200.

The SD format was jointly developed by Matsushita, Toshiba and Sandisk Corp. to answer the need for a cross-platform memory card with support for copy protection. Led by Matsushita and Toshiba, more and more products featuring an SD card slot are appearing on the market as the technology battles for dominance with Sony Corp.'s Memory Stick format.

With the price reductions, the SD cards are also slightly less expensive than Memory Sticks. Sony's cards sell at retail in 128M, 64M, 32M and 16M byte sizes for about $240, $120, $70 and $50, respectively.