October 3 - 4:20pm EDT   A Toshiba executive on Thursday said the Japanese electronics company would consider purchasing Fujitsu’s hard-disk drive unit if Fujitsu approached Toshiba, says a Friday WSJ report. The news comes after last month’s rumored bid by Toshiba to acquire flash-memory maker SanDisk, in an attempt to stop its sale to competitor Samsung, which Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida denied at an industry event, according to the same report. Nishida feels the current relations between Toshiba and SanDisk are fine. [full story]

September 26 - 10:10am EDT   Apple has slashed the number of iPhones it plans to build before the end of the year, claims the analyst group Pacific Crest. While it had been expected that some 18 million phones would be made, Crest cites "supply chain channel checks" which indicate that Apple is ordering only 14 to 15 million units. If accurate, the move is not expected to hurt Apple, but rather its suppliers. [full story]

September 25 - 3:50pm EDT   SanDisk today quietly confirmed the imminent launch of new capacities to its microSDHC and Memory Stick Micro (M2) lines. Both are doubling in capacity to 16GB and are targeted at cellphones and portable players that can use the format as their only or primary source of storage. The update gives the T-Mobile G1 as much potential storage as the iPhone and Nokia N96, while SanDisk's own Sansa View can hold as much as 48GB with the microSDHC option. Certain newer still cameras also support the format. [full story]

September 23 - 11:45am EDT   SanDisk on Tuesday announced the launch of a new, faster and more capacious 16GB Extreme IV CF card, as well as the fact that it and the rest of the Extreme IV range is now 12.5 percent faster, with read and write speeds now set at 45MBps, or 300X. Meant for use by professional photographers, all of the Extreme IV cards are also UDMA enabled, allowing the transfer of files to occur faster than before. At the same time, the portable memory maker introduced two ImageMate card readers, the All-in-one and Multi-Card USB 2.0 readers, each capable of transferring 1GB of data in 35 seconds. [full story]

September 22 - 7:45am EDT   The major music labels and SanDisk today tried to revive physical music with slotMusic. The concept is aimed at music phone users who want quick access to music as though it were a CD, but also to users who prefer to have a physical backup of digital music: each 1GB microSD card comes with an album's worth of music in 320Kbps MP3 files, enabling the music to be played right away or transferred to any computer through a bundled USB adapter. The extra space allows special features such as videos and can be used as storage space of its own. [full story]

September 16 - 7:20pm EDT   After four months of fruitless negotiation, Samsung is offering to buy flash memory manufacturer SanDisk for $5.8 billion, a move which has the latter accusing the former of undervaluing its worth. The Wall Street Journal reports that the South Korean electronics giant made the $26-per-share offer to gain the company's customer portfolio, as well as patents on which it normally pays hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties per year. This represents Samsung's first move to acquire a major business in 13 years. [full story]

September 16 - 4:20pm EDT   Earlier this month, a report had Samsung interested in buying portable flash memory maker SanDisk, and today’s rumors have another suitor considering making a bid for the company. A newswire reports Toshiba is the latest interested party, and is only considering a bid in order to prevent competitor Samsung from taking over SanDisk, thus creating a near monopoly as the sole supplier of NAND flash memory devices, components and subsystems. [full story]

September 11 - 8:00am EDT   SanDisk today upped the threshold for its Extreme III CompactFlash cards with a new 32GB card that meets its expectations. The new storage doubles the previous storage limit but still promises at least 30MB per second in read and write speeds. The combination suits the two to professional photographers and HD video capture; most still cameras can shoot in full-quality RAW without running out of buffer space or bogging down in transfers, while HD videographers can record in full 1080p while still having enough room for 80 minutes of footage on a single card. [full story]

September 5 - 9:55am EDT   Samsung is considering buying SanDisk in a deal that could reshape the storage industry, the former company said today. In acknowledging a government filing by Samsung that discusses the possibility of a deal, Samsung spokesman James Chung says the Korean firm had been considering "multiple" options for a deal with SanDisk but that hasn't committed to any particular course of action. SanDisk itself has admitted that it has talked to Samsung but claims that it regularly speaks with companies about possible agreements. [full story]

August 27 - 9:00am EDT   SanDisk on Wednesday helped push a transition to SDHC cards for pro and high-end amateur photographers by launching an update to its Extreme III SDHC lineup. The new 30MB/s Edition is about 50 percent faster in both reads and writes than previous Extreme III cards and is deliberately launching alongside cameras such as the Nikon D90, which virtually demand the extra transfer speed for burst shooting. With one of the newer cards, a D90 can shoot at its peak 4.5 frames per second for up to 39 JPEG photos before the SDHC card can no longer keep up. [full story]

July 22 - 1:25pm EDT   Windows Vista's architecture is actively hindering SanDisk's ability to roll out its next generation of solid-state drives, says company chief Eli Harari. In statements made just after his company produced disappointing quarterly results, the executive says that Vista is "not optimized" for using flash memory as its main storage and that the hardware managing data traffic needs to be redesigned to generate the expected performance; a patch for Vista itself would be ineffective. [full story]

July 15 - 7:25pm EDT   Sandisk on Tuesday introduced the "WORM," or "Write Once Read Many" SD card for professional uses such as storing evidence in police investigations, court testimony, medical records and electronic voting. Sandisk claims original data written to WORM cards are "effectively locked" and there is "no physical way to alter or delete the files." If stored properly, the company claims, WORM SD cards have an archive live of up to 100 years. [full story]

June 24 - 5:00pm EDT   Seagate is rumored to be looking into buying out Intel's 49 percent stake in the IM Flash Technologies joint venture between the chip maker and Micron, a flash memory manufacturer, according to analysts. That is just one option for Seagate, but the analysts say the company would be better off buying into SanDisk, as it is not involved with any other companies and is less costly. Furthermore, they maintain that Seagate needs to purchase or team up with a NAND flash memory maker in order to be successful in its solid state drive (SSD) production. [full story]

June 10 - 11:05am EDT   SanDisk today said it has bought out MusicGremlin for an undisclosed amount. The deal is meant to give the Sansa player manufacturer access to the smaller company's still rare direct-download subscription service, which allows members to download an unlimited number of songs each month to the player itself via Wi-Fi rather than first transferring them to a PC. The features will have a "key role" in future Sansa devices, according to SanDisk's Sansa Senior VP Daniel Schreiber. [full story]

June 9 - 4:20pm EDT   Storage and music player maker SanDisk has officially closed Fanfare, the company's online video service. The service is actually said to have stopped following the end of a beta period on May 15th this year, but due to low participation and a lack of public announcements, this fact has generally gone unnoticed. "We thank you for your participation and interest," reads a brief statement on SanDisk's website. [full story]