Reason for Price Difference of SDHC and CF cards?

I work part time here in Ontario at a large Canadian electronics store chain.

Our SDHC cards are always cheaper than the corresponding CF of similar capacity from the same manufacturer, and the sales we present are always "deeper" for the SD cards, especially the SDHC versions.

Is this just a reflection of the economy of a larger market (as the SD cards are used in the myriad of P & S cameras, etc.) or does it actually represent a lower manufacturing and distributing cost?

Maxdave

It's probably in part a lower design and manufacturing cost. SD and SDHC cards rely on the card reader to provide part of the controller; that's why there have been various "steps" in card capacity for them. CF cards have all the electronics needed to access your data included with each and every card. It means there's more to put in a CF card, but it also means that there are fewer barriers to using any card anywhere. It's like the difference between the old MFM hard drives, which required a separate drive controller (and which needed to be low-level formatted for that controller, by the end user/computer builder) and the current IDE and SATA hard drives, where the "controller" supplies a minimum amount of direction to the drive.

Thanks for the info, Jon!

Maxdave