The average price of notebook hard drives has fallen by almost 40 per cent in a year, according to a report from market analyst iSuppli.

Competition from Flash memory vendors, and an increase in the number of shipments of PCs and consumer products, helped push average prices down to $53 from $86 in the same period last year.

In comparison, hard drive prices for desktop computers fell to $51 in the third quarter of 2007, compared to $52.75 a year ago.

ISuppli said that the total number of hard drives shipped in Q3 2007 reached 134 million, up 15 per cent on the 114 million shipped in the same quarter in 2006.

Competition from Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Fujitsu, Samsung and Toshiba had helped push prices down.

"Prices will always come down if there is enough competition," said Krishna Chander, senior analyst for storage systems at iSuppli.