Industry’s Highest Capacity Card For Cellphones Will Enable
High-Resolution Photography, Digital Video, Music, Games and Data
Storage
LOS ANGELES, CA, Sep. 12, 2006 – SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK)
today announced a 4-gigabyte (GB)1 miniSD High Capacity (SDHC) flash
card at the CTIA Wireless Show, where the company is exhibiting in
Booth #1147.
The 4GB SanDisk miniSDHC card will be able to provide the fast speed
and large capacity required to support increasingly popular but
storage-intensive applications such as digital imaging, music and
video record/playback functions as well as mobile television and
videogames. The 4GB capacity can store more than 2,000
high-resolution pictures, more than 1,000 digital songs or up to 8
hours of MPEG 4 video2.
“The 4GB miniSDHC card represents a significant technological
breakthrough and highlights the growing need for large-capacity,
high-speed storage for the mobile phone market,” said Yoram Cedar,
executive vice president of handset business and corporate
engineering at SanDisk. “SanDisk is responding to the next-generation
demands of cell phone makers and users, who increasingly see their
phone as their camera, video player, gaming and music devices.”
“The new 4GB miniSD card from SanDisk allows handset manufacturers
and mobile network operators to plan rich media services for their
customers,” said Gerry Purdy, vice president and chief analyst,
Mobile and Wireless, Frost and Sullivan. “Four gigabytes of memory is
the threshold for providing adequate storage to support music, video,
gaming and other exciting applications in the handset.”
SanDisk is now sampling the new 4GB miniSD card to OEMs such as major
phone manufacturers and mobile network operators (MNOs). Retail
release of the card is planned for 2007. Though standard miniSD and
miniSDHC cards look identical in size and shape, only SDHC-compatible
products will be able to accept the new miniSDHC cards. Engineering
samples will be available for evaluation, as mobile phone makers will
need to upgrade the firmware in their handsets so that memory slots
can support the new card. OEM pricing has not been determined yet.
Based on the SD Association 2.0 specification, the new card is a
member of the SDHC family. SDHC is the new designation for any SD or
SD-based card that is larger than 2GB and adheres to the SD 2.00
specification, a completely new design that is required for cards and
hosts to support 4GB to 32GB capacities. The specification was
developed by the SD Association, an industry standards board, which
also defined three speed classes for speed and performance
capabilities. These cards adhere to the SD Speed Class 2 Rating
specification which defines a minimum sustained transfer speed for
SDHC cards.3
For additional information, please visit SanDisk’s website:
What is SDHC: (http://www.sandisk.com/sdhc/SDHC.pdf)
SDHC product information: (http://www.sandisk.com/sdhc/)
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, CA and has operations
worldwide, with more than half its sales outside the U.S.