Thanks for the memory, chaps

By PETER GRIFFIN IT editor

They are skimpy wafers of plastic and metal but "flash" memory cards have become the digital replacement for everything from a roll of film to floppy disks and rewritable CDs.

And the good news is they will get cheaper and their capacity will grow as the "price per megabyte" of making flash cards drops.

If you are buying a digital device these days, it's important to take note of what removable memory it requires.

Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick, Compact Flash, MultiMedia Card (MMC), Smart Media and xD are the main types available - roughly in order of popularity.

Is a 16 megabyte Memory Stick card enough to go with your new Memory Stick Walkman? Are you kidding? Maybe, if you want your digital jukebox to consist of three measly songs.

Is a Smart Media card compatible with the built-in SD slot on my laptop? No way, you'll have a serious memory mis-match going on.

Whatever its type, the 256MB (megabyte) sized-card is the standard for removable storage these days, even if digital camera and computer vendors still insist on selling us 32MB and 64MB versions.

For US company SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash cards, the aim is to one day sell its memory cards in the same way computer disks and blank tapes are sold now.

"The time is right to make them consumables, where you buy them in gas stations and convenience stores," says Bob Goligoski, SanDisk's director of PR, who estimates a 256MB card will sell for about US$10 ($16.50) in four years.

SanDisk has the consumer in its sights in New Zealand, where its sales are at present in "seven figures" but are expected to double on a yearly basis. Goligoski said the company was negotiating to puts its cards on the shelves of a couple of major retailers.

Although heavy users of flash cards, New Zealanders are nevertheless at the tailend of the consumer electronics selling cycle. Phones and cameras sporting memory cards with gigabytes of capacity are already on the shelves in Asia and the United States.

Making it all possible is good old Moore's Law - which states that the number of transistors on a given chip can be doubled every two years. It was dreamed up by chip-maker Intel in the Sixties and still holds true.

SanDisk is shrinking the transistors on its chips to hold 4 billion bits of data this year - 16 billion by 2007.

"Flash" memory refers to units in which data is saved to chips that retain the data when the power is off. And there are no moving parts in flash memory, unlike PC hard drives.

A large Japanese fabrication plant co-owned by SanDisk and Toshiba churns out the chips.

"We're making and selling a million cards a week. Toshiba and us are both betting this market is going to keep getting bigger," says Goligoski. And there's every likelihood of that.

Driving the need for higher capacity cards is the increasing resolution of digital cameras and camera phones hitting the market. While 2 megapixel cameras used to be the norm for amateur photography enthusiasts, 5 megapixel to 8 megapixel cameras are selling at reasonable prices now.

Higher quality images take up more room on memory chips and video capture adds a whole new need for storage. With the consumer electronics squeezing more into less with each new product release, there's only one way capacity is going - up.

IDC predicts that next year, 40 per cent of camera-phones will incorporate a 2 megapixel camera and a slot for a memory card.

Since 2001 SanDisk has chopped its prices by between 30 per cent and 40 per cent a year, a trend other manufacturers who license SanDisk's technology have followed.

And by SanDisk's own estimates, the biggest future market for memory cards will be in multimedia phones. Research house IDC expects 157 million of the 507 million mobile phones shipping this year to have built-in memory slots.

By 2006, more than half of the 600 million phones expected to ship will sport the slots. That means a lot of memory cards floating around between phones, computers, digital cameras and MP3 players.

SD and Memory Stick take 80 per cent of the global market, with SD holding the larger share. The other formats will continue to lose market share with Compact Flash holding on with a loyal user base among photography enthusiasts.

But flash memory has competitors in hard drive vendors and emerging technologies such as Portable Blue, a Blue-Ray format that stores gigabytes of data on a tiny hard drive.

SanDisk believes the two can co-exist. "Are flash cards going to be in iPods one day? If the price gets cheap enough, maybe. It's a matter of cost."

Flash cards are also safer than storing data on 3.5 inch floppy disks which have a notoriously poor record for going the distance and even CDs, some types of which are susceptible to "data fade".

They are also much more "shock-proof" than hard drive.

Goligoski points to the example of SanDisk vice-president Douglas Fine, who was killed in a Swiss Air crash in 1998.

Fine's luggage was recovered and an SD card was still functioning. It's a macabre product endorsement - but flash cards have a reputation for handling extremes.

SanDisk's website has letters from users who have washed and tumble-dried their cards or abandoned them in house fires, only to find them functioning afterwards.

Storage in a flash

The options:

Secure Digital: Supported by a large range of vendors, including Toshiba, Panasonic and Hewlett Packard. 8MB to 2GB cards now available. miniSD cards are also available for mobile phones ranging in size from 64MB to 256MB.

Memory Stick: Sony's storage format which is also used by computer makers such as Acer, Pioneer and Sharp. High-end models of SonyEricsson phones support a miniature version of Memory Stick known as Duo (16MB to 128MB) and Duo Pro (256MB to 512MB). Sony also has a format known as MemoryStickPro (128MB TO 2GB) which can write at speeds of at least 15Mbps and is suitable for recording video. MagicGate Memory Sticks have an embedded chip for copyright control.

Compact Flash: The long-time standard for serious photographers, 4GB Compact Flash cards are now on the market. Strong support from Nikon and Canon.

Multimedia Card: Supported by the likes of Nokia, Canon and Sharp (up to 1GB now available) but losing share to SD and Memory Stick.

SmartMedia: A niche format mainly for digital cameras, also slipping in the flash card shake-out.

xD: 64MB to 512MB. Supported by Olympus and Fuji digital cameras.

Memory bank - buy online

Flash memory cards litter the shelves at retailers such as Harvey Norman and Noel Leeming, but there are good online deals. A good place to start your online browsing is PriceSpy, an aggregator of online stores specialising in PC parts and peripherals. Ascent lists a 512MB SD card from Kingston for a reasonable $227. SanDisk's version costs $257. Shipping is, impressively, free. The online store Flashcards.co.nz specialises in the full range of flash cards and has some reasonable prices. Be sure to check shipping costs and delivery times before entering your credit card details online.

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