Nanotechnology could yield billions of dollars of new data storage devices, based on exotic technologies, in just the next few years, with vastly larger memory and faster response times, analysts told United Press International.
Advances customers could see from such devices include cell phones with enough memory to download movies, suggested Lawrence Gasman, principal analyst for NanoMarkets, an industry research firm in Sterling, Va. The global market for such nano-based storage -- engineered at the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter, which is shorter than a wavelength of visible light -- is expected to increase dramatically. Experts predict a growth from $97 million in 2004 to $17.9 billion by 2008 and $65.7 billion by 2011, large enough to suggest future disruptions in existing markets and potentially the rise of new industry giants.
"The surprise is how close some of these are to reality," Gasman told UPI. "The nanotech impact is often shrugged off as happening in our children's era. With storage, it's beginning to take off now, and will be here in two or three years' time."
"What helps with the rapid adoption is how the titans of industry are getting involved -- the Intels and the IBMs," Sean Murdock, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance, told UPI.
