Heralding a significant breakthrough in mobile entertainment, SanDisk Corporation today introduced TrustedFlash, a new technology that will enable consumers to buy premium music, movies and games on flash memory cards for use interchangeably in mobile phones, laptop computers, PDAs and other portable devices. The announcement was made at a press conference at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment Show, where SanDisk is showing products at Booth 944.

Music producers and movie studios will be able to release premium content on TrustedFlash products because it provides the superior security and digital rights management solutions that are required by these providers. Consumers will be able to download premium content from online digital music services through their mobile phone or PC. They'll also be able to purchase pre-recorded content on SanDisk's new gruvi cards, the first product to be released with TrustedFlash.

TrustedFlash will empower consumers to use their purchased content in a multiplicity of supported devices, in contrast to today's closed, proprietary systems that bind content to a particular host device, such as a specific cell phone or MP3 player. TrustedFlash technology empowers the card itself to be the manager of digital rights, thus giving consumers the freedom to transfer the card - and its content - to other supported devices without compromising its content protection system. TrustedFlash cards also function as regular cards in non-secure host devices.

"The TrustedFlash technology launched today is the foundation of our third generation cards," said Eli Harari, SanDisk CEO. "It provides independence from the host, offering consumers true freedom to enjoy the content they own on their cards in numerous host players. TrustedFlash cards will unlock a world of premium content to consumers using mobile phones, music players, game players and video players, while providing strong security to content providers such as record, movie and game companies. SanDisk has developed TrustedFlash over the past two years, working closely with industry leaders in entertainment, mobile handsets and cryptosecurity," he said.

TrustedFlash addresses the security concerns of content providers as well as SanDisk OEM customers such as mobile network operators (MNOs) and mobile phone manufacturers. Among the companies that have adopted the TrustedFlash platform are EMI Music, Samsung Mobile Communications, Yahoo! Music and NDS.

"TrustedFlash cards are highly secure, thanks to an on-board processor, a high-performance cryptographic engine and tamper-resistant technology that are designed to provide much higher level security than has previously existed on memory cards and on most consumer electronics devices," said Yoram Cedar, SanDisk's senior vice president of engineering and the emerging markets business unit. "Cards built on the TrustedFlash platform will provide full digital rights management capabilities, supporting industry security standards such as both symmetric and asymmetric algorithms." TrustedFlash cards, he added, can be customized to meet any OEM customer's specific security and digital rights management (DRM) solutions, including integrating their own chosen DRM solution and rights portability across many devices. SanDisk is currently working with a number of leading handset manufacturers to enable their handsets to support TrustedFlash cards through a software upgrade.

The TrustedFlash platform is aimed at providing the flexibility that customers demand with their content while meeting the security requirements of content providers - record labels, movie studios, game producers, mobile phone manufacturers and mobile network operators. These worldwide providers of wireless voice and data services can use TrustedFlash cards to store secure data and content as well as to enable new and existing services.

In a second phase planned for 2006, it is expected that TrustedFlash will also support mobile commerce applications and enable handsets to perform secure online financial transactions such as credit card payments, mass-transit access and one-time password authentication.

TrustedFlash cards are available immediately to OEM customers in the miniSD, microSD and SD card formats, with maximum capacities of up to 2 gigabytes. For consumers, TrustedFlash gruvi music cards with preloaded music content are expected to be available in the near future.