| PMA 2005 | SanDisk expands flash memory market |
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SanDisk expands flash memory market: A SanDisk press meeting was held in Amsterdam in the former Olympic Stadium. SanDisk, one of the world's leading suppliers of flash memory cards for digital cameras, cam-phones, video cameras, PDAs, MP3 players and other digital applications, experienced a huge growth over the last few years in a market that seems to keep on growing for another while. Ed Moro, the new Managing Director Sales of SanDisk EMEA, offered a presentation at which the potency of various SanDisk Flash products was mentioned. An interesting detail is the fact that the phenomenon of Mobile Imaging is catching up with the, until recently, extremely important digital camera market.
According to Ed Moro, the keynote of the year 2005 will be the development of a new strategy and also the importance of a balance between production and the delivery of the different kinds of memory cards and to maintain that balance. SanDisk, being one of the world's leading suppliers is capable of pushing the market up higher, and SanDisk also has ambitious plans to expand the horizontal outlet market. SanDisk is founder of the comprehensive line of flash memory cards, amongst them the SanDisk CompactFlash, SanDisk Secure Digital and the ultra compact, light weighted SanDisk TransFlash memory card. The latter one might get a name change in the future while this name is just an aggregation of two names.
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Ed Moro - Managing Director Sales of SanDisk EMEA
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The TransFlash is an incredibly interesting memory card. Ultra small and light as a feather and extremely suitable for application in a mobile phone. When we look at the prognostications, it is clear that the amount of memory card slots in mobile phones for the year 2005 alone, was twice as high as was the case on the digital camera market; an increase of the amount of memory slots in mobile phones that will rise with 60% from 2005 to 2006, to finally end up in 2007 with an increase of 220% compared to the increase of the prediction from 2005!
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It seems that the days of a strong growth of the digital camera market are over, appears from Ed Moro's presentation. The market will stabilize, only the digital SLR market will be responsible for a strong growth within its own segment. The mobile telephony will consume a large part of the memory market. And this is quite reasonable and understandable. Looking at the Asiatic models with their many functions that look like standard equipment, an application like the possibility to play music is a genuine memory eater, or to use Ed Moro's words: "A killer App!"
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Beside the mobile telephony market, the USB Flash drives market is also growing. This market is expected to surpass the digital camera memory market. The shifting of the memory market effects memory cards like the CompactFlash memory card. Despite the enormous storage capacity the format seems to become the bottleneck. Looking at it from a technical point of view it is possible to extent storage capacity to an unknown amount of GB's pressed together on a small surface, it might extent in the upcoming years to 12 and even 16GB CompactFlash memory cards.
The CompactFlash card will certainly find its way into the digital SLR cameras and other devices, but the manufacturer will mainly focus on memory cards like TransFlash, Secure Digital and Memory Stick memory cards. The Memory Stick has become popular thanks to the many Sony products that support the Memory Stick and the introduction of many hand-held game modules like the portable PlayStation. These hand-held game devices are expected to grow to a need of storage capacities of 512MB and higher.
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In spite of the shifting of the memory market, SanDisk still embraces the digital camera market. Last year the newly introduced Shoot & Store was successfully received on the American market, and this concept underlined SanDisk's opinion, that the memory card is accepted as a safe and lasting storage method for photos. The replacement of a film roll in fact. Practice showed that retailers who were capable of selling flash memory cards before, also successfully sold the Shoot & Store concept to the consumer.
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Beside a market for digital cameras, mobile telephony and medical market, SanDisk acknowledges the possibilities of the educational market. Think of the fact that in the USA alone, 55 million young students (from 12 years of age) carry approximately 5kg of books around, every school day. Imagine that these school books would be stored digitally on a SanDisk USB Flash drive for example... This is one example of the many application possibilities there are available on order to get a compacter way of storage. The SanDisk Secure Content Solutions consist among other things of BookLocker, a USB Flash drive that can contain tenths of books in a safe, reliable way. SanDisk cooperates with IBM and Dell to develop a certain service.
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The introduction of the Plus SD technology shows that SanDisk never stops developing and inventing new application possibilities. And like most simple solutions, this invention is truly superb. Equip a SanDisk Secure Digital format memory card with a TransFlash module, let it hinge in the centre of the card, so two parts are created, integrate a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed interface and you created a flash memory card with dual functionality. The flash memory card is applicable in devices that support the SD memory card. And the SanDisk SD Plus memory card can be directly inserted in a USB slot, in order to transfer data with the speed of USB 2.0 Hi-Speed. Simple and functional, but try to think of it! During the upcoming PMA 2005 in Orlando, SanDisk will supply us with more information about this newly developed product. At first we will have to settle for 512MB and 1GB storage capacity, but bearing the effective application possibilities in mind, we will not be surprised if 2GB and higher are already trampling with impatience around the corner.
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The choice in different kinds of memory cards doesn't seem to shrink. The horizontal extension of applications seems to obstruct a standard rather than stimulate it. SanDisk, as one of the world's leading suppliers of flash memory cards, has the possibility to supply the whole market, which is an impressive achievement.
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The LetsGoDigital team will be attending the upcoming PMA show, which will be held in Orlando, USA, to bring you a live coverage, directly from the show floor. The PMA 2005 will be a real happening. Bookmark the special PMA 2005 website, http://www.pma-show.com, developed by LetsGoDigital or sign up via pma-alert@letsgodigital.org to be the first to receive the latest PMA news!
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Related SanDisk Links:
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