Digital camera memory cards that you don't erase. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. SanDisk calls them Shoot & Store, memory cards being sold in retail stores…designed to be your permanent archive of digital photos…much like film negatives. Prices start at 14.99 for a 32 megabyte card that can hold about 50 one megapixel images. The problem is many consumers today are buying three, four or even five megapixel digital cameras. So at the higher end…paying 15 dollars to store ten digital pictures doesn't seem very economical. But SanDisk believes permanent memory card storage….which would obviously boost sales….could become a big business. Product marketing manager David Smurthwaite says it will be helped by continuing declines in memory card prices….

"Our costs drop and we continue to drive pricing down to give the consumer more capacity and increase the number of megabytes that they're able to use. You see similar patterns in other consumer electronic businesses. Intel for instance or in other chip businesses and we typically look for price reductions in the retail world of about forty percent per year."

Some 512 megabyte cards have been dropping below one hundred dollars. While storing digital images on CDs, DVDs or hard drives is less expensive…SanDisk says pictures stored on flash memory cards will last longer…even for decades. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.