First to Offer 6- and 8-Gigabyte microSDHC Cards — World’s Smallest Flash Cards for Mobile Phones
SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today announced that it is has begun sampling 6- and 8-gigabyte (GB)(1) microSD™ High Capacity (microSDHC™) flash memory cards to major phone manufacturers and mobile network operators (MNOs) for testing and evaluation. The new cards are ideal for the growing number of feature-rich multimedia handsets that bring together phones, music players, hand-held computers, digital cameras and more. An 8GB microSDHC card can store more than 2,000 digital songs, or more than 5,000 high-resolution pictures, or up to 5 hours of high-quality MPEG 4 video(2).
Retail release of the cards and availability to phone manufacturers and network operators are planned for later in 2007. Pricing has not yet been determined.
“With these new cards, any mobile phone with a compatible microSDHC slot will have just as much storage as the largest-capacity iPhone,” said Jeff Kost, vice president and general manager of the Mobile Consumer Solutions division at SanDisk. “What’s more, removable cards make it easy to share content you create with friends, ‘sideload’ files from a computer, and add more storage simply by purchasing more cards. By offering capacities of 6GB and 8GB, SanDisk is poised to enable people to enjoy more photos, more map data for navigation, more videos, more games and more music, wherever they go, on any phone with a compatible microSDHC slot.”
SDHC is the designation for any SD™ or SD-based card that is larger than 2GB and adheres to the new SD 2.00 specification required for cards and hosts to support 4GB to 32GB capacities. The specification was developed by the SD Association, an industry standards board, which has also created three classes to define minimum sustained data transfer speed. These cards adhere to the SD Speed Class 4 Rating.(3)
In addition to microSDHC, SanDisk offers a broad range of both embedded and removable storage solutions for mobile handset manufacturers and mobile network operators. Product lines include iNAND™ and mDOC™ embedded flash drives and microSD™, miniSD™, Memory Stick Micro™ M2 and MegaSIM™ cards.
SanDisk is the original inventor of flash storage cards and is the world’s largest supplier of flash data storage card products, using its patented, high-density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., and has operations worldwide, with more than half its sales outside the U.S.
(1) 1 gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes.
(2) Approximations based on JPEG images on 5 MP camera with average file size of 1.5 megabytes (for pictures); 4 minute songs at 128 kbps MP3 (for songs) and 5 hours of MPEG 4 video (30 frames per second, 640×480, 3Mb/sec. for video). Actual numbers may vary.
(3) Based on SanDisk internal testing.
SanDisk and the SanDisk logo are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. iNAND, mDOC and MegaSIM are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation, and/or its subsidiaries. microSD, microSDHC and miniSD are trademarks. Memory Stick Micro M2 is a trademark of Sony Corporation. All brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective holder(s).
