SD Card Association Announces Final Approval of the microSD Specification

The SD Card Association (SDA) has announced the final approval of the microSD specification that is now available for immediate use. The microSD card provides full compatibility and interoperability with current SD devices.

The card is fully compatible with SanDisk's TransFlash cards, over 5 million of which have shipped to date and is supported in 40+ handsets announced by manufacturers such as Motorola, Samsung, LG, Kyocera, and Sagem.

In the mobile phone market, a small sized memory card is needed by handset vendors to provide memory expansion with the least impact on overall size. The addition of digital audio and cameras is driving this need for more memory in mobile phones. Conventional memory cards are, however, too big in dimensions for small mobile phone application. Hence, the SDA, with increasing focus on the mobile phone market has developed a new small sized SD card.

Currently the SDA supports three formats: the SD Memory Card, along with the miniSD and the new microSD cards. The format is supported by SDA members Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, Panasonic, Toshiba, NEC and other marketers of SD and miniSD-enabled mobile phones around the world.

The full interoperability of the microSD with TransFlash means that the microSD card can be used immediately in handsets that currently use TransFlash cards. Existing supporters of TransFlash will migrate their products to microSD. In the meantime, TransFlash cards will operate in new microSD hosts, and microSD cards will work in existing TransFlash hosts.