Sandisk to offer new miniSD cards in Japan

Sales of the new products come as the first mobile phones with slots for the card are entering the Japanese market. The new miniSD card format was introduced by SanDisk for sale to OEM customers in March 2003, and is being sold to consumers through retail outlets with a complementary adapter that converts the miniSD card into the SD card form factor. The adapter allows the miniSD card to fit into existing SD card slots, thereby providing compatibility with the growing number of SD compatible devices in the market. Hisao Kushiyama, President of SanDisk Limited (SanDisk Japan), a wholly owned subsidiary of SanDisk, said, “The new generation mobile phones being introduced this year have exciting multimedia capabilities including cameras, MP3 players and internet messaging, and we expect that this will drive the requirement for more storage in these phones. The first of these phones, the NTT DoCoMo i-mode cellular phone 505i series, debuted

this year and four of the models have a slot for miniSD cards.”

The new retail miniSD cards will start at 32 megabytes (MB) capacity with higher capacities ranging up to 256 MB to be introduced later this year and in early 2004. Suggested retail pricing for the 32 MB miniSD plus SD adapter is approximately ¥2,800 (about $24).