CDMA giant Qualcomm Inc. announced it will add support for removable miniSD and SD cards in its line of Mobile Station Modem chipsets. The move is a nod to the growing power of mobile phones and the resulting need for additional storage capabilities.
Such advances in storage create significant new opportunities in wireless. Imagine: A “Simpsons” fan could buy the entire first season of the TV show on quarter-sized cards, which could then be slipped into a phone’s memory card slot for viewing. Or an MP3 buff could download a few hundred songs onto a storage card and listen to them later using a mobile phone.
Indeed, some advanced mobile phones currently operate much like desktop computers or high-end personal digital assistants, complete with large internal memories and slots for data disks. For example, the Sony Ericsson high-end P800 features 12 Megabytes of internal storage, plus a Memory Stick Duo card slot that can increase storage to as much as 100 MB. Nokia Corp.’s new 3650 smart phone also features 3.4 MB of internal storage, plus a MultiMediaCard slot that can hold around 100 MB as well. And phone makers and storage companies promise that this is just the beginning. Indeed, Microsoft Corp. executives have been showing off a device using their Smartphone operating system that includes a card with 1 Gigabyte worth of storage.
Such holding capability easily dwarfs that of desktop computers sold just five years ago. Research firm IDC predicts most of the memory technology in the wireless business will center on flash storage cards. The firm predicts 218 million such cards will be sold in mobile phones by 2007. Flash storage technology works by creating a charge that stays in a cell even after the system is turned off, thus lowering prices and power consumption.
Under its new offering, Qualcomm teamed with storage company SanDisk Corp. The companies said that by adding miniSD/SD card memory integration, consumers can store digital photos, navigational maps, audio and video clips, games, music and other entertainment and enterprise files in a variety of downloadable file formats on their SD-enabled wireless devices.
“We’re pleased to provide support for SanDisk’s removable memory cards, storage solutions that enhance the multimedia and position location applications for our 3G CDMA chipset solutions,” said Luis Pineda, vice president of product management for Qualcomm’s CDMA technologies. “The collaboration between Qualcomm’s chipsets and SanDisk’s storage solutions will increase the convenience of storing information on 3G CDMA wireless devices.”
