Siemens AG and Hitachi Ltd are to develop and produce new smaller Flash memory cards for cellular phones and other mobile devices. Siemen’s Infineon Technologies AG group will combine its MultiMedia Card interface with Hitachi’s Flash memory chip on a single die. The firms have already produced a 16Mb version of the diminutive Flash MultiMediaCard. They plan a 32Mb version for the third quarter 1999 and expect to ramp up to 128Mb over the course of next year.
Siemens and Hitachi are not the only companies eyeing the expanding market for miniature Flash memory cards. Sony Corp has been pushing its Flash memory ‘stick’ as a storage medium for MP3 music downloads and Samsung has recently released its 32Mb SmartMedia card.
