back to article Peak thumb drive is coming in 2016

Peak thumb drive is upon us: by 2016 sales of the ubiquitous storage medium will start to decline. So says the the Santa Clara Group's USB tracker for 2013's fourth quarter, which says last year saw humanity produce 273 million thumb drives. The average capacity of drives shipped in 2013's final quarter was 25 gigabytes, so …

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  1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    "The report doesn't say why thumb drive sales are likely to dip"

    Maybe everyone's got one? OK, perhaps several, rather than one, but they last for ages and work just fine so there's no need to buy a new one every six months.

    1. Lusty

      I'd have thought it's more likely that the mobile phone and cloud solutions have replaced thumb drives for the average user. Techies may need them for a while to install operating systems but most of the techies I know have long since stopped using them for actual data transfer unless a customer is playing the no laptop on the network game. Even then, customers without wifi are becoming increasingly rare so it's often only for files over 10MB or so where email becomes more difficult than finding the USB key at the bottom of the bag :)

      1. Michael Habel

        I'd have thought it's more likely that the mobile phone and cloud solutions have replaced thumb drives for the average user.

        Well I do tend to keep my music, and other Audio Files on Google Music. Its a RPITFA to upload these on such a slow pipe. But, the trade off more then makes up for this!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      To my mind, what drives sales is the ever-increasing capacity of the things gives the consumer an incentive to keep upgrading. I remember a time when there was a whole tenner difference between 128MB and 256MB so I settled for the smaller device (which I still have, incidentally, as an emergency last resort). Last year I walked into a newly opened branch of Staples and they were dishing out 8GB drives, two per customer, at £2 each.

      Since they don't actually do anything with the data themselves there comes a point for each user where they really don't need one any bigger, so will tail off buying any more. It may come at a different point for everyone, but sooner or later you'll get bored with trying to find more things to put on it.

      Maybe the future is everything is so small they just merge with external backup SSDs, and the development effort turns to long-life retention guarantees. Perhaps someone could start researching a form-factor that looks neat on a shelf...

  2. Tom 7

    I wonder if the real problem

    is people looking at their 'data' collection and realising they can never afford enough tissues with balm or even just the time to watch the videos they've collected.

    I had friends 20 years ago who had so much vinyl that more time was spent looking for the next thing to play than actually playing it. The thing about jackdaws is they generally lack the ability to either sort their data usably - or write regular expressions to find it when they need it.

    My 11 year old daughter rarely uses her camera for just that reason - the 8 year old is still doing 10Gb a week.

    1. JEDIDIAH

      Re: I wonder if the real problem

      > is people looking at their 'data' collection and realising they can never afford enough tissues with balm or even just the time to watch the videos they've collected.

      That equates to terabytes of data and we aren't quite there yet either in terms of thumb drives or micro SD cards. Video (or even photos) is big and it doesn't take that much stuff to fill up the smaller devices.

  3. Michael Jennings

    Ah ye, another technology for which usage peaks long after it has become obsolete

    1. Michael Habel

      Ah ye, another technology for which usage peaks long after it has become obsolete

      Obsolete you say? I like Cloudy things as much as the next guy. But I for One don't see MicroSD HC/XC Cards as being the same thing as a USB2.0 Thumbdrive. Which are more or less free as Beer these days. So implying obsolescence would suggest something is set to replace it. Considering the uses I have for "Thumbdrives" and or other such MicroSD HC/XC Cards to pump Phablet Memory, are NOT always in line with each other. I would love to know what some of you lot think will be replacing these things?

      Begs question why they can sell these Chips so cheaply in a USB Shell, and yet demand so much more when you lob on a few more of these things in parallel on a 2.5"/3.5" form factor.

      1. DJO Silver badge

        "Begs question why they can sell these Chips so cheaply in a USB Shell, and yet demand so much more when you lob on a few more of these things in parallel on a 2.5"/3.5" form factor."

        Probably because the chips in sticks are cheap slow devices while in SSDs they are pricier fast high duty cycle devices, also because they can charge more, got to make some profit somewhere.

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  4. Chicken Marengo

    My prediction...

    I predict that one day soon, someone will find all of the thumb drives that I've lost over the years.

    The associated supply glut will assuredly crash the the market.

    1. Zog_but_not_the_first
      Unhappy

      Re: My prediction...

      Yep. They've taken over from the Biro in dropping into tiny wormholes in the fabric of spacetime and disappearing forever.

      1. Michael Habel

        Re: My prediction...

        Yep. They've taken over from the Biro in dropping into tiny wormholes in the fabric of spacetime and disappearing forever.

        Hay are you bucking after getting yourself locked up, and getting sent into tax exile? Such is the fate of those who spread such wild theories...

    2. Patrick R
      Joke

      Re: My prediction...

      That's why they're also called pen drives.They gather with pens somewhere.

  5. Alan Bourke

    Thumb drive

    is a stupid term.

    1. Anonymous IV

      Re: Thumb drive

      Since it's short for "thumb-sized drive", about the best you can say is that the term is inelegant.

      Would you prefer the recursive initialism UFD = USB Flash Drive = Universal Serial Bus Flash Drive?

      1. LoopyChew

        Re: Thumb drive

        UFD is an initialism but it sure ain't recursive. (For it to be recursive the "U" in "UFD" would have to stand for "UFD.")

    2. FartingHippo
      Thumb Up

      Re: Thumb drive

      It's nice to know I'm not alone in thinking that. "Memory stick" is a much better and more descriptive name.

      1. Vic

        Re: Thumb drive

        "Memory stick" is a much better and more descriptive name.

        It's also the name of a Sony-proprietary card format.

        I don't know if anyone still uses them, but some years back, there was a risk that if you bought a "memory stick", you *might* get a USB drive, or you *might* get a Sony-specific Memory Stick card that you couldn't use...

        Vic.

        1. Crazy Operations Guy

          Re: "Memory Stick"

          To make sure you actually get the right thing, you just need to look at the prices and pick the ne that is a tenth of the cost of the other.

          But I would prefer the confusion over people calling them 'USBs'.

          1. DJO Silver badge

            Re: "Memory Stick"

            I always thought the correct term was "FMST" as in:

            "Where is that Fucking Memory Stick Thing?", an oft heard refrain.

    3. Jim 59

      Re: Thumb drive

      and the "drive" bit is more daft than the "thumb" bit.

  6. Ralph the Wonder Llama
    Meh

    Never mind all that...

    ...I think we've hit Peak Peak.

    1. FartingHippo
      Boffin

      Re: Never mind all that...

      The big problems arrive at Peak Trough (or is that Trough Peak?).

  7. James 51

    I bought one of the first 256mb drives that was available in the UK. Ten years later it's still my off line back up for all my documents. My 32gb stick is a bit small for playing video on the xbox and the other 32gb doesn't hold that much video on the satellite box.

  8. Truth4u

    large thumb drives are bad mmmkay

    It's like trying to fill up your car with petrol through a straw. So slow you will die of boredom before the tank is full.

    1. DuncanL

      Re: large thumb drives are bad mmmkay

      USB 3 drives are your friend - USB 2 and a 32gig stick are indeed a match made in hell.

  9. Hollerith 1

    64Gb drive is my friend

    I travel to places where wifi or indeed any connection is patchy or not available. I have my music on a 64gb stick and my essential papers on a smaller one, and I am happy as a clam. And I can't be the only one a little unhappy about cloudifying all my precious digital belongings.

    1. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: 64Gb drive is my friend

      Indeed, I end up on planes a lot where they want $15 to connect to the (terrible) WiFi. I have gotten in the habit of carrying three drives, a 256 GB USB 2.0 device for my entertainment, a 16 GB self-encrypting device for documents and a 32 GB USB 3.0 device for a portable OS environment.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 64Gb drive is my friend

      Oh, YOUR digital belongings, is it?! Methink you didn't read the LICENCE when your purchased the right to play back OUR digital belongings.

      ;)

      1. Stevie

        Re: Methink you didn't read the LICENCE

        or, less confrontationally, that the content in question was all self-authored or supplied unencumbered.

        < | \|/

        :::::c )

        < | /|\

      2. JEDIDIAH
        Devil

        Re: 64Gb drive is my friend

        > Oh, YOUR digital belongings, is it?! Methink you didn't read the LICENCE when your purchased the right to play back OUR digital belongings.

        What license? If it was a physical copy of something, there was no license. Just standard copyright law applies.

  10. Jim 59

    Don't forget every smart device sold (TV, DVD player,...) contains a slot for USB drive. With home networking still being generally p*sspoor, its a convenient way of watching your media. Then the "internet of things", which will likely be "the internet of things with usb slots"...

    1. Swarthy

      The SneakerNet of Things?

    2. JimmyPage Silver badge

      Home networking ...

      indeed. I can shift 32Gb across 10 metres in about 4 seconds. My home network might do that in 16 hours ...

      reminds me of an exercise we did at Uni .... up to what radius is a floppy tied around a St Bernard faster than a 300 baud connnection ....

  11. bob, mon!

    An exabyte here, and exabyte there...

    ...pretty soon you're talking real storage.

  12. jib

    Yeah, The other day I was downloading Bluray movies from the internet quicker then I could copy them to my 16GB usb Thumb drive/Memory Stick/UFD. Crazy how fast a good internet connection has gotten vs usb 2. Defo need to get myself a usb3 one.

  13. Stevie

    Bah!

    I feel mean for saying so but the full worth of the report is seen in the choice of averaging technique for determining the popular size of thumb drives.

    Even I know what you need is the one where you take the actual sizes and group them, then count the ones in each group and report the group with the most in it, and I'm terrible at sums. Adding up all the storage and dividing by units sold is as useful as a ham sandwich at a Jewish wedding.

    Even the person of median intelligence should be able to spot that 25 gig is a nonsensical size for thumb drives - at least, not fly-by-night counterfeit thumb drives.

  14. Matthew 3

    Outside the city...

    ... where 5 meg broadband is the stuff of rumour and legend, these drives still provide a valuable way to move data between machines rather than just download everything each time.

    But it is a worry that NTFS' file system may soon be overwhelmed by a giant volume set, created from all of the millions of USB drives plugged into it. :-D

  15. spacecadet66

    “Vendors continued to promote features for differentiation and value-add, especially in areas such as security and backup"

    In other words, "Vendors feel the need to distract buyers from the fact that their products are an interchangeable commodity, and thereby shovel on useless bloatware that everyone deletes first thing."

  16. Azzy

    What about the rest of the world?

    It seems like they're undercounting emerging markets, if they're predicting the peak to happen so soon. I'm sure sales will fall (if they aren't already) in developed countries - but largely because everyone (or at least every household) has several already, and the capacities have long since gotten high enough that nobody needs to buy new ones. And they're less necessary now, with the rise of mobile devices and cloud services.

    But they seem to be imagining that rest of the world has ubiquitous broadband and home networking too. As more and more people in underdeveloped countries start using computers, it is inevitable that they'll need to move files between computers before they have good broadband.

  17. Bucky 2

    No industry pundit should be able to make a prediction unless they also promise to perform a penalty if their prediction is wrong.

    If the penalty isn't equal in drama to the prediction, then the prediction may not be published.

    I think that would be fun....

  18. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Not tiny enough

    You put a 128GB microSD card in your phone and thumb drives start looking very cumbersome.

  19. Jonski

    Best of both worlds

    If you want both USB3 for your lappy and micro SD for your phone, try something like the USB3/mSD adapter. (It works, bitches.)

    http://www.amazon.com/Lexar-High-Performance-microSDXC-Memory-LSDMI64GBBNL633R/dp/B00IF4OATU

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