Transforming Flash marketing
With flash memory becoming not only cheap as chips, but also completely commonplace, vendors are desperately looking for new ways to add value to their products, and many have started dabbling with the notion of pre-bundled content, including films and music.
Sandisk has long been pushing its pre-loaded music micro SD cards for mobile phones, and Kingston is doing something similar by releasing pre-bundled content on flash drives, most recently, for example, with "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" on a 2 GB Premium USB 2.0 stick.
But will the strategy take off in a big way, or is it simply a stop-gap gimmick? It certainly isn't new, with Kingston executive Mark Leathem admitting: "We've had the strategy for three to four years, but the market hasn't appreciated it yet."
Leathem added that it seemed like such an obvious progression, and one which should help sell more product at a higher price point, but noted "We've not hit that point, I don't think we've turned the corner, because the reality is that when people buy SDs, they're still just looking for storage, not for content."
The challenge, Leathem explained, was "finding that one piece of content that will speak to that guy in Brazil and that guy in the US or Europe too." Kingston, he said, would continue to experiment with the idea, after having already tried putting music, films, and even games like guitar hero on SD cards.
According to Leathem, there are two main challenges when it comes selling the idea of pre-bundled content to punters, the first simply being that potential buyers look at flash memory as storage and not as a content container.
Secondly, with movie studios anxious to make their licensing fee and take a cut, the price adds up, and often it's a fee consumers just aren't willing to pay.