SD card : dominate the market of memory card
2008-08-20

                 SD card : dominate the market of memory card

Secure Digital (SD) is a flash (non-volatile) memory card format developed by Matsushita, SanDisk, and Toshiba for use in portable devices. Today it is widely used in digital cameras, handheld computers, PDAs, mobile phones, GPS receivers, and video game consoles. Standard SD card capacities range from 8 MB to 4 GB and for high capacity SDHC cards 4 GB to 32 GB as of 2008.

The SD card family has 4 members: mini SD, micro SD and SD High Capacity (SDHC), as well as combo SD+USB cards. Here introduces two of them.

The mini SD card

The mini SD Card is a small form factor removable and portable memory device intended for use in mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and many other gadgets. It is launched by SanDisk Corporation in March 13, 2003. While the new cards were designed especially for use in mobile phones, they are usually packaged with a mini SD adapter which enables compatibility with all devices equipped with a standard SD Memory Card slot. The mini SD card is made by several different manufacturers and comes in different brand names. Its compatibility is universal.

The micro SD card

The Micro SD card is a format for removable flash memory cards. It is derived from SanDisk Trans Flash and is used mainly in mobile telephones, but also in handheld GPS devices, portable media players, digital audio players, video game consoles and expandable USB flash memory drives. Currently, it is the smallest memory card available commercially, at a size of 15 mm × 11 mm × 0.7 mm, and about a quarter the size of an SD card. There are adapters which allow a micro SD card to be used in devices intended for SD, mini SD or memory stick Duo cards. However, they are not universally compatible.

Dominate the market of memory card As to the global manufactures, the flash memory card of Compact Flash (CF), Secure Digital (SD), Multi Media Card (MMC), Memory Stick (MS) and xD cards are widely offered in the market. But, now, the family of SD memory cards dominates the flash memory card manufacturing industry in mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea. And it is predicted that its leadership will continue in the few coming years.

Recently, a report released on the internet shows that SD cards, including SD and micro SD cards, accounted for 40 percent of the flash memory cards produced by China manufactures in 2007. In South Korea, SD cards were widely used in navigation devices, digital cameras and electronic dictionaries. And these applications in the consumer digital products pushed the SD card into the mainstream of the consumer electronic market. Among the two kinds of the SD cards, micro SD cards are dominating the region’s end-user market because of the adoption in mobile phones. It is reported that SD cards account for 40 percent of the output of South Korea manufacturer Digix Semicon Co. Ltd. microSD cards account for 30 percent of the company's output, and SDHC and CF cards each account for 15 percent share. Basic SD cards from Taiwan makers range from 128MB to 4GB in terms of storage capacity. Dynamic System Electronics Corp. offers SD cards supporting 128MB to 4GB. The company's basic SD cards have an average read speed of 22MBps and write speed of 15MBps.

With component costs continuing to spiral down and manufacturing technology in a mature state, the supplier bases in Taiwan, mainland China and South Korea have stabilized after a phase of market consolidation. OEM and ODM contracts continue to be the lifeblood of many companies, but there are those that started building their own brands in the international market