Enables Portable Multimedia Players with Increased Functionality at Lower System Costs; Small Form Factor Storage Innovator Sets a New Bar in Areal Density, Maintains Leadership in Durability and Affordability
LONGMONT, Colo, July 18, 2005 – Cornice Inc. — an innovator in consumer storage solutions — today announced a revolutionary new 4.0-gigabyte Storage Element (SE). This new product will allow OEMs to extend the functionality of the latest consumer electronics devices while offering revolutionary new features at shelf prices that can only be enabled by Cornice’s unique low cost architecture. MP3 players, cell phones, personal video recorders and GPS devices will all be immediately enhanced by this new SE.
“The market is demanding increasing capability in ever smaller devices. iPods are becoming computers and computers are shrinking very rapidly. At the same time people still believe that small devices should be inexpensive and will not accept devices that aren’t reliable,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group. “The ideal capacity for most of these devices, today, is 4.0-gigabytes because it provides the best balance between capacity and manageability. Currently Cornice makes the most reliable product with this capacity that can fit in a sub $199 device and that combination gives them a serious advantage in this emerging market.”
Cornice’s unique architecture lowers cost by using only one side of the disk and removing components not needed in small portable electronic devices. At 4.0-gigabytes on one side, Cornice remains firmly in the leadership position for storage density.
“The CE market has clearly demonstrated the demand for affordable, high capacity storage in small packages with incomparable growth rates in hard drive-enabled MP3 players, mobile phones, and other pocket-able electronics,” said Camillo Martino, Cornice’s new president and chief executive officer. “Having shipped millions of components into multimedia and cellular products, Cornice now has the broadest design expertise in the industry and with the launch of a whole new set of unique features beyond just capacity, is poised to lead the way in moving the industry to smarter and more capable storage.”
Durable Devices for Today’s Active Lifestyle
Cornice technology ensures that consumer electronics devices will provide continuous and uninterrupted playback even during today’s most active lifestyles. The new Cornice 4.0-gigabyte SE is protected by Cornice’s second-generation ruggedness design, Crash Guard II™, and can withstand excessive shaking, extreme drops, and other abuse without skipping, stopping, or crashing.
Crash Guard II™ consists of:
Active Latch — When dropped, the most common damage to a hard drive occurs when the head scrapes across the surface of the disk (not unlike the needle scratching across an old vinyl LP record when the turntable was bumped). Cornice not only removes the head from the disk, but also securely locks it in place with an active latch mechanism whenever the drive is not actively seeking data.
Skip Control — Hard drives are going places they have never been before — jogging, 4-wheel driving, skydiving — and are expected to operate even with excessive and repetitive motion. Cornice designed the SE from the ground up to withstand the most extreme conditions while providing continuous playback without skipping or restarting.
Drop Safe — The newest feature in the Crash Guard family allows the SE to actually sense being dropped. This means that even if the SE is in the middle of reading or writing data to the disk, it can immediately react and place the head safety under the active latch well before the unit actually strikes the ground.
Since its initial launch in 2003, Cornice has driven innovation and achieved first-to-market status in five separate categories — the mobile phone, digital video camera, pocket-able digital audio, personal storage (USB stick storage), and GPS markets with customers such as Archos, Garmin, Philips, Rio, Samsung and Sony.
Pricing and Availability
The 4.0-gigabyte SE with Crash Guard II technology will be available in July 2005 at $65 per unit in quantities of 10,000.
About Cornice
Cornice Inc. is the leading innovator in consumer storage solutions that enable a new generation of pocket-able consumer electronic devices for the world’s foremost brand-name manufacturers. The Cornice Storage Element (SE) is durable, integrated personal storage that brings new levels of durability and content capacity to these devices. The Cornice SE is built into a wide variety of consumer products, including mobile phones, MP3 players, personal video recorders, GPS devices and portable storage products. Cornice customers consist of the world’s leading consumer electronics manufacturers. Privately held, Cornice is headquartered in Longmont, Colorado, with integration centers in Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. Visit Cornice at http://www.corniceco.com/.
