BusinessWire, Wednesday, November 05, 1997 at 14:49
PressLink and on the "Today's PhotoWire" page of Business Wire's
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PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 5, 1997--
Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, QUALCOMM and Siemens Private
Communication Systems Announce Support For MMC And
Intentions To Use It In Future Telecommunications Products
SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) and Siemens AG today introduced
the MultiMediaCard (MMC), the world's smallest solid state storage
device. The MMC provides portable data and audio storage to the
smallest advanced mobile phones and pagers currently being developed.
With support already from leading telecommunications companies,
SanDisk expects that the MMC will emerge as the portable storage
standard for mobile phones, pagers and other handheld products.
The MMC, which weighs less than two grams and is the size of a
quarter coin, was designed to meet the unique requirements of the
portable communications and computing markets. The necessity for the
absolutely smallest physical size card and connector and easy
interface to microcontrollers influenced the design of the simple
seven pad card.
SanDisk believes that the MMC will be the first storage card that
optimally meets the mobile communications industry's requirements for
small size and a simple high performance serial interface. With this
new flash card technology, voice and e-mail messages, faxes, internet
files and software applications all can be downloaded to the new card
and accessed on mobile phones and pagers.
The MMC announcement was made at joint SanDisk and Siemens press
conferences in Palo Alto, CA and Munich, Germany. Both companies
will be showing the MMC at the fall COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas,
NV, Nov. 17-21. (SanDisk booth, L-1204, Las Vegas Convention
Center; Siemens booth, S-4550, Sands Expo and Convention Center.)
Originally conceived by Siemens, the MultiMediaCard has been
jointly developed and will be produced by SanDisk and Siemens in both
flash and ROM versions. SanDisk, the world's leading supplier of
flash data storage products, will manufacture the flash MMC while
Siemens, one of the world's largest semiconductor companies, will
produce the ROM-based MMC.
Ulrich Hamann, president of Siemens' Chip Card and Security ICs
Division, said: "SanDisk and Siemens have jointly developed the
industry's ideal mass storage device for mobile applications. The
MultiMediaCard, invented by Siemens, is an ultra-small form factor,
low cost, low power and solid state solution which provides maximum
reliability.
"Siemens and SanDisk have met with leading manufacturers of
mobile phones, pagers, mobile computing and other mobile electronic
products who are enthusiastically endorsing the MultiMediaCard for
its ease of integration and additional functionality."
Eli Harari, CEO and president of SanDisk, said: "SanDisk is
committed to make MMC a broadly supported new industry standard.
SanDisk's Israel Design Center, established specifically to develop
MMC, has worked closely with Siemens and the world's leading
telecommunications companies. Together, MMC has been defined for
optimized storage of data, voice and applications software in the
smallest form factor, consuming the lowest power and having a simple,
low cost, high performance serial interface.
"We believe that the broad adoption of MMC as the new storage
card standard for intelligent communications devices and other small
form factor consumer electronic products will greatly accelerate the
market development of smart phones, advanced pagers and consumer
multimedia devices. We are extremely pleased with the commitment to
MMC's standardization from our partners participating today in this
announcement."
Nelson Chan, SanDisk vice president of marketing, explained, "One
of the major benefits of the MMC is having a DOS/Windows file
structure which makes it very user-friendly for desktop connectivity.
The MMC will be a highly-supported product, and a number of customer
development tools will be provided for the card. These tools will
facilitate an easy design-in of MMC and will support downloading of
new applications from third party software developers."
Siemens Semiconductor originally conceived the MultiMediaCard as
an extension of its growing worldwide line of Smart Card and Security
Semiconductors.
The MMC has a form factor of 32 millimeters (mm) high, 24 mm wide
and 1.40 mm thick which represents approximately one-fifth the volume
of a CompactFlash card. First samples will be available in January,
1998, initially in 2, 4, 8 and 10MB capacities. SanDisk expects to
begin shipping those products in Q2, 1998. Higher capacity devices
will be available in 1999.
In high volume OEM pricing, the 2MB MMC is priced at $26, the 4MB
card at $32, the 8MB card at $43 and the 10MB card at $45. The MMC
is being announced at this time so that developers of the numerous
communications platforms currently on the drawing board and the
corresponding third party application software developers worldwide
can begin to plan on taking advantage of MMC storage in these new
platforms.
Flash is the ideal storage media for portable, battery-powered
devices such as pagers and mobile feature phones. Because its power
requirement is so low, flash extends the battery life of host
systems. Flash is a non-volatile semiconductor technology meaning
that no on-going power is required to maintain the stored data or
audio after the host system is turned off. Flash is also very light,
reusable, extremely durable and has no moving parts.
Siemens Semiconductor developed a non-planar surface technology
for the MMC, which results in only half the costs of a conventional
ROM technology. Using its aggressive shrink roadmap, Siemens expects
to be able to quadruple the memory capacity of the MMC in a one year
cycle.
The ultra high density cell design makes possible, for the first
time, high capacity data storage for such applications as phone books
and hotel lists, all on a small removable electronic medium bringing
additional benefits into hand-held products. The 2MB and 8MB ROM
will be available in Q1/98 with a 32MB product released in one year.
Siemens' high density product roadmap includes the introduction of a
128MB MMC in the year 2001.
Mats Lindoff, director of research and development, Ericsson
Mobile Phones and Terminals in Europe, said: "The MultiMediaCard
will win wide endorsement from manufacturers of mobile phones and
pagers because of the increased functionality it brings to those
products. The MMC is an ideal fit for future communications products
that Ericsson expects to introduce to the market."
"Motorola is pleased to support this initiative," said Jim
Caile, corporate vice president, Motorola's Cellular Subscriber
Sector. "We believe that MMC represents a removable media standard
that will enable user friendly storage-intensive applications, in a
manner similar to, and complementary with, other standardized
removable media, such as smart cards and PC cards."
Mikko Terho, vice president, wireless data, Nokia Mobile Phones,
said: "The rapid growth of the telecommunications market will
accelerate with the advent of next generation communications
products. We expect that the MultiMediaCard will be an integral part
of that industry growth because of its small form factor,
versatility, low price and low power requirements."
"QUALCOMM's digital CDMA phones will benefit from the compact
MultiMediaCard's low power requirements and mass storage capabilities
to provide our customers with the most advanced technological
developments in the industry," said Gina Lombardi, vice president of
product development for QUALCOMM's Subscriber Products Division.
Joachim Grollmann, director, Product Marketing Mobile Phones,
Siemens Private Communication Systems, said: "The MMC is regarded to
be an ideal mass storage medium for many interesting applications
which can now be implemented with more advantages than ever before,
especially in the area of mobile communication terminals."
The MMC is housed in a simple plastic package with a seven pad
serial interface. The high performance interface offers easy
integration into various devices regardless of the microprocessor
being used.
In order to support a wide range of applications, the MMC
interface protocol is designed for maximum scalability and
configurability. All device and interface configuration data, such
as maximum frequency, supported modes of operation, memory size and
card ID, will be stored on the MMC. The write rate is 200KB per
second (sustained) while the read rate is 2MB per second (sustained).
SanDisk's popular, small-size CompactFlash storage card is being
used in numerous mobile products where interoperability between
portable products and desktop computers is critical. These portable
products include digital cameras, a market where CompactFlash is
emerging as the digital film standard. SanDisk believes that the MMC
has the same potential to enable a whole new class of applications in
the mobile telecommunications industry where extremely small size,
low power and a low cost interface are critical requirements.
With annual sales of approximately $63.6 billion in fiscal year
1995/96, Siemens is one of the world's largest electronic and
electrical companies. Employing 379,000 people worldwide, the
company concentrates its activities in the major business segments of
energy, industry, communications, transportation, health care,
information systems and electronic companies worldwide.
Siemens Semiconductors Group is the second largest European
semiconductor manufacturer and, in terms of technology, is one of the
leading microelectronics companies worldwide.
SanDisk Corporation designs, develops and markets flash memory
data storage products used in a wide variety of electronic systems.
The company has optimized its flash memory storage solution, known as
"system flash," to address the needs of many emerging applications
in the consumer electronics and industrial/communications markets.
SanDisk's products include removable CompactFlash products and
FlashDisk cards, and embedded FlashDrives and Flash ChipSet products.
The matters discussed in this news release contain forward
looking statements that are subject to certain risks and
uncertainties as described under the caption "Risk Factors" in
SanDisk's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended
December 31, 1996, and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal
quarter ended September 30, 1997, filed with the Securities and
Exchange Commission. SanDisk assumes no obligation to update the
information in this release.
Note to Editors: CompactFlash is a trademark of SanDisk
Corporation. MultiMediaCard is a trademark of Siemens AG.
SanDisk's web site/home page address: sandisk.com
Siemens web site/home page address: siemens.de
CONTACT: SanDisk
Nelson Chan, 408/542-0456
Bob Goligoski, 408/542-0463
KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA NEVADA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: PHOTO PHOTOWIRE COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS COMED
TELECOMMUNICATIONS INTERACTIVE/MULTIMEDIA/INTERNET PRODUCT TRADESHOW
PHOTO: bw2
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