What about distribution?
To get to the bottom of this we spoke to UK distributors for Kingston and Patriot - Simms and Target Components, respectively.
Melissa Smith, a marketing executive at Simms, told us that due to the high price of the 128GB drive, Simms is consulting with resellers today to gauge demand before placing orders, but said they would be able to get hold of some today if they wanted.
Mahmoud Madaci, memory product manager at Target, confirmed Patriot had launched the 128GB product, but that he expected a roughly two week lead time after ordering. He also advised that they will be selling into the channel for approximately £245 ex VAT. So even allowing for VAT and ten percent margin, they should still be a bit cheaper than the Kingston ones.
Maybe this is just semantics, but we feel that if a company claims to be "first to market" with a product, that product should be available to buy, or at least be in the channel.
Having said that, many other technology companies have jumped the gun in their bid to be first, and the highly competitive nature of the technology business means it's likely to continue.
