Samsung Develops 8-Gbyte Mobile Phone Memory Card

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The new card is capable of storing 2,000 MP3 music files, 4,000 digital photos, or about 5 DVD-quality movies, the company said.

By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
May 18, 2007 10:09 AM

Samsung Electronics on Thursday said it has developed a fingernail-size 8-Gbyte MicroSD memory card for mobile phones.

The new card is capable of storing 2,000 MP3 music files, 4,000 digital photos, or about 5 DVD-quality movies, the company said. It has a read speed of 16 Mbps and a write speed of 6 Mbps.

SD, or secure digital, memory cards, typically are used for data storage in digital still cameras. MicroSD cards, which are a quarter of the size, are backward compatible with SD cards using an extender. This allows multimedia files downloaded by mobile phones to be used in other media.

Samsung is aggressively pursuing the SD card market, as well as the competing MMC, or multimedia card, market. Market research firm Dataquest expects the memory card market as a whole to average 10% annual growth through 2010, Samsung said. Demand for high-density 8-Gbyte cards is expected to grow at an average of 2.6 times per year in the same time period. By 2010, the 8-Gbyte memory card, which has yet to be supported in phones, is expected to be the market mainstream in terms of units sold, Samsung said.