The MultiMediaCard Association (MMCA) today announced that it has finalized the MMCmicro specification at its recent Summer General Meeting in Zurich, Switzerland.
The new MMCmicro Cards represent the third MultiMediaCard form factor, along with MMCplus and MMCmobile Cards. Measuring 12 x 14 x 1.1 mm, they are about one-third the size of MMCmobile Cards.
The MMCmicro Card standard is designed to meet the latest market requirements for data storage in mobile phones. It operates at either 3.3 volts or 1.8 volts and is capable of data transfer rate of up to 26MB/s (megabytes per second), the highest in performance amongst micro-sized memory card standards in the market. In addition, 1GB (gigabytes) of flash memory can be packaged into an MMCmicro Card with existing NAND Flash technology. The resulting high performance and large memory capacity in a small footprint lets mobile phone manufacturers incorporate more multimedia features in the mobile handsets for the consumers to enjoy a rich multimedia experience wherever they go.
The MMCmicro Cards are similar in size to embedded flash memory, but are readily removable to allow for upgrading to different memory capacities and be interoperable with other consumer electronics devices. A 256MB MMCmicro Card can hold about 250 minutes of CD-quality music, or over 500 photos taken on a mobile phone with a two mega-pixel camera.
According to Danny Lin, MMCA Marketing Committee Co-Chair, "MMCmicro Cards is the latest memory card standard from the MMCA. These micro-sized memory cards, will permit handset manufacturers to pack large amounts of removable data storage into ever-smaller handsets. And as more memory-intensive audio and video applications appear on mobile handsets, they will in turn drive demand for even greater storage capabilities."
The MMCmicro Card standard was originally proposed by Samsung Electronics Co. for adoption by the MMCA. Samsung and other companies have begun mass-producing the cards since March. MMCmicro Cards in densities up to 1GB will be available this year, with 2GB and 4GB expected in late '06 and mid '07, respectively.
