Sunnyvale, Calif. — SanDisk announced yesterday that it will ship a 1GB SD card to its distributors this month, with wider retail distribution to follow in the second quarter.
The $499-suggested 1GB card will be the highest capacity flash-memory card in the SD format, which eclipsed the CompactFlash card in the fourth quarter of 2003 to become the top-selling format, according to Port Washington-based research firm NPD Group.
The higher capacity was enabled, in part, by a new manufacturing technology from Sharp. The “stackable” packaging technology allowed SanDisk to double the memory capacity without increasing the size of the card. The new technology can also be applied to other flash-card formats, SanDisk said.
In December, the SD Card Association reported that more than 1,500 products were using the SD format.
