SanDisk Corp. and Sony Corp. introduced the industry’s third major removable memory card format specifically designed for space-conscious mobile phones. The companies unveiled their new Memory Stick Micro product, a removable memory card that will go up against the MMCmicro and MicroSD specifications.
“The Memory Stick PRO format co-developed with Sony has become a highly successful product line for us due to its popularity with a wide range of consumer electronic products such as digital cameras and video-game consoles,” said Eli Harari, SanDisk’s president and chief executive officer. “Sony and SanDisk recognize the rapidly growing market opportunity for memory cards with multimedia mobile phones and are joining forces to develop the ultra-small Memory Stick Micro format to foster development of extremely compact multimedia mobile phones.”
There are three main kinds of memory cards for mobile phones: SD, MMC and Memory Stick cards. The SD Card Association and the MMC Association each recently approved new mini-size specifications aimed at the mobile-phone market. The new “micro” sizes for SD and MMC cards are one-third the size of standard stamp-sized MMC and SD cards-roughly the area of the head of a pen or a pinky fingernail. Unlike standard card sizes, these micro memory cards more snugly fit inside mobile phones and let users easily store and remove digital content like pictures, music and applications.
The new Memory Stick Micro is roughly the same size as the micro versions of the MMC and SD specifications. However, the micro versions of the Memory Stick, MMC and SD specifications are not interoperable.
SanDisk’s involvement in the Memory Stick Micro format is notable as the company played a key role in developing the MicroSD format through its TransFlash offering.
Removable memory cards were first introduced in the late 1990s, mainly for digital cameras. The postage stamp-sized cards allowed photographers to snap hundreds of pictures without having to unload their images into laptop computers. As the consumer electronics industry flourished, more gadgets shipped with slots for memory cards.
Memory cards work on Flash digital storage technology. Flash memory, made by companies like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Toshiba Corp., is relatively inexpensive and does not require moving parts. With technological advances and falling Flash prices, memory cards can store multiple gigabytes of information.
Memory Stick Micro media will be made available in the first half of next year.
