The universal serial bus (USB) specification shipped in more than three billion devices in 2009, including the PC, PC peripheral, consumer electronics (CE), communications, and automotive segments. By 2012, the number of wired USB-enabled devices shipped will exceed four billion.

High-speed USB device shipments dominate the current market. However, in late 2009, the first 5Gb/s SuperSpeed USB devices shipped. Initially, SuperSpeed USB will be found in PCs and PC peripherals, such as external hard drives and flash drives, before migrating to portable devices requiring increasing amounts of storage, including digital cameras, portable media players, and high-end mobile phones. The primary limiting factor in SuperSpeed adoption is its integration into PC core logic chipsets, which is not expected until late 2011. This will limit SuperSpeed adoption in PCs, which will have a ripple effect on SuperSpeed in those devices that connect to PCs.

USB has been extremely successful in the digital still camera and digital camcorder markets because most users want to download images to PCs to store video recordings and still pictures or to print pictures. As picture file sizes increase with camera resolution, and as camcorders move from standard-definition (SD) to high-definition (HD), the desirability of SuperSpeed USB becomes even more apparent, according to In-Stat (www.in-stat.com). As a result, adoption of SuperSpeed USB into digital cameras and camcorders will be much more rapid than other CE device segments, with penetration levels reaching 50% and 60% respectively, by 2014.

“SuperSpeed USB can move 25GB of data in 70 seconds, the same amount of data would take nearly 14 minutes using high-speed USB, This dramatic leap in download times makes the adoption of SuperSpeed USB into digital camcorders and cameras a natural migration. We expect to see the first SuperSpeed USB camcorders hit the market in the second half of 2011,” said Brian ORourke, principal analyst at In-Stat.

According to In-Stat, USB 3.0 will reach 40% penetration in the portable digital media player market in five years.  225 million SuperSpeed USB flash drives will ship in 2014, representing a CAGR of 791.8% from 2009 to 2014.

Tags: USB