Lexar Media on Tuesday announced the release of its Professional 600x CompactFlash (CF) memory card, which allows for 90MBps transfer speeds using the UDMA 6 standard. With the announcement, Lexar is the second manufacturer to offer such speeds in a CF card, as SanDisk already offers a 90MBps product range. SanDisk offers up to 64GB capacities, while Lexar makes 8GB, 16GB and 32GB cards.
SanDisk achieved a technical milestone today by shipping its first products based on four-bit-per-cell (4BPC) storage. Both standard SDHC and Memory Stick Pro Duo cards now use the much denser storage (versus existing 2BPC or 3BPC) to carry all their storage on 64-gigabit (8GB) chips; the move lets even a 16GB card use just two chips and should scale to allow for 64GB and larger-capacity cards in the future. It should also have implications for solid-state drives and others that depend on multi-level cell storage.
SanDisk on Wednesday announced it has released memory cards meant specifically for portable gaming systems such as Sony's PSP Go and PSP as well as the Nintendo DSi. All significantly boost the storage capacity of said systems, with the PSP Go's capacity doubled by the new 16GB Memory Stick Micro M2 card. There is a 32GB Memory Stick PRO Duo and a Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo of the same capacity for the PSP from Sony, while the DSi gets an 8GB SDHC card.
Toshiba and SanDisk will produce 20nm-class NAND flash memory at their joint-venture facility in Yokkaichi, Japan in the second half of 2010, DigiTimes reported on Monday, citing industry sources. The facility will scale up production to about 200,000 wafers per month as a result. Toshiba used the factory to build 3-bit per cell (3bpc) 32nm memory, which were expected to account for 50 percent of capacity by the end of 2009, but the schedule was delayed.
Nowhere is it harder to make a good portable media player than in the ultra-small, wearable field; even Apple decided it would rather go without a screen than try to fit the usual controls into something that clips on your belt. SanDisk has long thought differently and has carved out a niche for itself with the Sansa Clip, but we want to know in our full reviewif its Clip+ sequel can topple the iPod shuffle.
SanDisk on Monday announced the release of the fastest CF memory card range in the industry, meant for professional DSLR photographers, with its Extreme Pro series. The cards are fast at 90MBps, or twice as fast as previous SanDisk products, thanks to a new SanDisk Power Core Controller that better exploits the UDMA bus. They are also available in the industry's largest capacity as well, at 64GB.
Samsung said (subscription required) late Thursday that it was no longer pursuing a buyout of SanDisk. The revelation comes nearly a year after Samsung put its plans on hold following SanDisk's rejection of a $5.8 billion bid and four months after the two agreed to license each other's patents and ultimately avoid what had prompted the purchase offer.
SanDisk launched its first new media player in over a year today with the Sansa Clip+. The major revision to its iPod shuffle competitor fits a microSDHC card slot and can use this either to expand the built-in storage or to play the company's preloaded slotMusic or slotRadio cards. It's also finally Mac-compatible and lets those users drag-and-drop music from Mac OS X Panther or later.
Real this morning branched out to Apple devices in earnest by revealing a port of its Rhapsody service to the iPhone and iPod touch. Normally only offered through rival players like those from SanDisk, the service gives subscribers access to the full song catalog and lets them queue up any of the 8 million songs from Rhapsody on request. It also provides access to playlists, Rhapsody Radio and every other service normally available through the full-function website, Real claims.
Sony today published final details of its new high capacity version of its Memory Stick format first previewed at CES. Now known as Memory Stick XC, the format borrows much of its advancements from SDXC and switches to the newer exFAT file system to provide as much as 2TB of storage once flash memory advances. Full-speed XC-HG Duo and XC-HG Micro cards will also theoretically transfer up to the maximum 480Mbps (60MB per second) of USB 2.0 and should transfer at a minimum of 5MB per second even in the slowest environments.
SanDisk has announced a new Extreme SDHC 32GB card, due to ship in August, geared toward high-end DSLRs and AVCHD-based HD camcorders. The card is rated for a maximum 30MB per second in read/write performance and carries the new Class 10 rating, surpassing the requirements for AVCHD-level High-definition video recording. The new Class 10 rating was recently added by the SD Association as part of its SD 3.0 Specification and guarantees a minimum sustained transfer rate of 10MB per second.
SanDisk has begun shipping its next-generation SSD drives geared for netbooks, the pSSD P2 and S2. Both series of components feature new non-volatile nCache technology which is claimed to enable a five-fold increase in random write performance compared to HDDs, an important advancement for netbooks that use full-featured operating systems such as XP or Ubuntu. The technology is designed to reduce instances of stalling or "shuddering" experienced with earlier-generation SSDs.
SanDisk Corporation released its Netbook SDHC removable flash memory card on Tuesday, available in both 8GB and 16GB capacities. The product is meant to expand the limited storage space found on the increasingly popular netbook computers, especially those equipped with smaller -- typically less than 32GB -- solid state drives (SSDs). In netbooks with traditional hard drives, storage space is less of an issue, as they are typically at least 160GB in capacity.
Featured deals from DealNN include hard drives, printers, cameras and more. First up is the re-designed SanDisk 8GB Cruzer USB flash drive for $24.99. That's $15 off the list price of $39.99 and includes FREE shipping. The newly re-designed SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drive features a retractable USB port and is backed by a lifetime limited warranty from SanDisk.
Rumors for the upcoming PSP Go! may have been corrected on Friday by a follow-up rumor. Pointing to supposed insiders aware of PSP development, PC World downplays the likelihood of the Sony console getting internal memory and instead claims that it will use a high-speed card format, such as the Memory Stick HG-Micro format that was teased at CES this year. The card is meant for cellphones but would be about 3 times faster than the Memory Stick Duo cards used for the existing PSP, topping at 60MB of data per second.
Semiconductor giants NEC and Renesas today said they would merge in a deal likely to change the electronics industry. The two plan to finish talks by July that would create a single company by next April. Such a deal would give them roughly $13 billion in combined yearly sales and would make it the single-largest Japanese company building processing technology.
The notion of an ultra-simple music player has been around for some time, but most of these designs have, for the most part, kept made certain assumptions about how digital music must be played: that it has to come from a computer, that the user must have exact control over when songs play. SanDisk has taken a bet that there's a crowd which is looking for an experience more like their favorite FM station; we hope to find out in our full review whether that's a wise guess or an attempt to preserve a dying format.
Western Digital this morning grabbed an edge against rival Seagate by acquiring flash storage maker SiliconSystems for $65 million. The deal takes effect almost immediately and will set the new division towards producing solid-state drives (SSDs) for its parent. No immediate product plans have been announced, but SiliconSystems currently makes SSDs for notebook-friendly 2.5-inch sizes and smaller, including 1.8-inch and memory card-sized drives.
Sprint is hoping to embed its cellular networking in devices from at least Garmin, Kodak and SanDisk, a leak (registration required) on Tuesday suggests. The Wall Street Journal claims to known an individual aware of talks that would see Sprint provide Internet access on these partners' devices as it does with Amazon's Kindle 2. Such deals would have similar arrangements and have companies pay in bulk for the data used on the network rather than demand regular subscription fees from the device owners.
The Sansa slotRadio MP3 player from SanDisk that was first introduced at CES has been given an official release date on Friday, with the company announcing it will make the $100 player available then. Buyers will get a microSD card with the player preloaded with 1,000 popular songs from every common genre on the Billboard charts. While these files will be DRM-protected and only play on the Sansa slotRadio, users can plug in their own tracks on separate microSD cards.
Unnamed sources are saying flash memory maker SanDisk is again the prospect of a possible takeover by Samsung or Toshiba. The rumors come from a Friday EETimes report and have both Samsung and Toshiba making simultaneous bids for the flash memory maker. Last year, Korea's Samsung launched a hostile takeover bid for SanDisk, but the talks ended without an agreement. Toshiba is already working with SanDisk on flash storage and bought shares in SanDisk last year.
Sandisk has recently trademarked the Sansa Tap name, suggesting the company is working on a touchscreen MP3 player, according to a DAPReview report on Monday. While there is no other information to go on regarding the nature of the possible device, the existence of competition making touch-based devices, the name, and a perceived consensus on high demand for the players points to Sansa Tap as likely referring to touchscreen displays.
SanDisk's opening moves for PMA began today with two new high-speed card readers. The ImageMate All-in-One and ImageMate Multi-Card both have a more compact design with a removable tripod that lets them sit upright in tight spaces. They also transfer more quickly than past models: the All-in-One can sustain up to 34MB per second for an Extreme IV CompactFlash card, while the Multi-Card peaks at the maximum 30MB/sec read and 27MB/sec write speeds of an Extreme III SDHC card.
Nokia today bolstered the Symbian Foundation with the addition of multiple key new members. HP, MySpace and SanDisk lead the new sign-ons and each have their own different reasons for joining the open-source mobile OS project. HP hopes to improve its support for managing Symbian; MySpace hopes to further refine its MySpace app for the phone throuhg the open code; SanDisk hopes to improve the use of storage for multimedia apps. None of the three has given clues as to how soon products will appear that take advantage of Foundation membership.
JVC today rolled out a pro-grade HD camcorder designed explicitly for videographers using Apple's Final Cut Pro editing suite. The GY-HM700 is the only 1080p camera to capture directly in the MOV format used by QuickTime and so lets producers send raw footage directly to Final Cut without the software having to first transcode or otherwise alter the material before it enters the pipeline. Editors can even trim video while it's stored on the camera, JVC notes.
SanDisk, in collaboration with Toshiba, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference announced its latest memory technology that combines X3 and 32 nanometer manufacturing processes. The multi-level cell NAND flash is designed to offer 32Gb capacity with three bits of memory per cell, all in a package small enough to fit the microSD memory card format.
Along with Toshiba, SanDisk at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference today announced plans to ship an ultra-dense form of NAND flash memory that promises a breakthrough in storage. Called X4, the technology uses a special memory controller that maintains data traffic speed while still fitting four bits of data per cell. The approach lets SanDisk and Toshiba place 8GB of memory on a single chip, twice as much as before, and while still maintaining a transfer speed of 7.8MB per second.
SanDisk on Thursday announced that it and Toshiba have changed up the terms of their joint venture agreement to manufacture 300mm flash memory chips. Under the new agreement, more than 20 percent of the venture's output capacity will be transferred to Toshiba, with SanDisk receiving about a third of the deal's $890 million worth in cash and the rest going to reduce SanDisk's leases for equipment involved in manufacturing the chips.
The slowing economy is the main reason for electronics maker Sony announcing its first annual loss in 14 years, along with announcing a preliminary fourth quarter loss of nearly $199 million, according to a Thursday report. It was the third time this business year that Sony cut its annual forecast, and both it and the estimated near-$2.9 billion annual loss come after last year's respective profits of $2.6 and $5.3 billion. It's a similar story at Toshiba, where fourth quarter numbers are down about $1.8 billion compared to a $466 million profit last year, while forecast annual profits are nearly $3.1 billion in the red, the first time in seven years.
SanDisk at the CES introduced the Sansa slotRadio player and accompanying slotRadio music cards, meant for casual music listeners who do not want to get involved with music downloads or subscription-based services. The small die-cast aluminum player has a 1.5-inch OLED screen that shows artist and song information for the tracks as well as the radio stations from the built-in FM radio tuner. A belt clip is included to allow for hands-free operation.
SanDisk on Thursday unveiled the third generation of its Solid State Drive lineup with an emphasis on making them available to the public. The company promises drives that are both inexpensive and fast through a combination of cheap multi-level cell (MLC) memory, a new memory controller and its ExtremeFFS file system. Even in flash memory's historically weak performance with sequential data, SanDisk estimates 200MB per second reads and 140MB per second writes. That's about five times faster than a 7,200RPM hard drive, the company believes.
SanDisk continued its CES news on Wednesday with word of updates to its Mobile Ultra cards. The company now has 16GB versions of both its microSDHC and Memory Stick Micro cards that double the company's previous best capacity without sacrificing performance. Faster transfer speeds let them support higher-resolution video capture, live GPS and other features that sometimes bog down with more basic mobile storage.
SanDisk today rolled out its CES lineup with a focus on its USB flash drive range. The Ultra Backup is characterized as the first plug-in USB jump drive to have a button-activated backup feature that automatically syncs information between the host computer and the removable storage. It also lets users lock down longer-lasting information with password protection and AES encryption performed entirely in hardware.
Today's DealNN deals include a variety of products from solid state drives and printers to flash drives. First up is the 32GB Cavalry Pelican solid state drive priced at $79.99 at Buy.com. Get VMware Fusion 1.0 with free upgrade to version 2.0 at MacMall.com for $14.99 after mail in rebate. RadioShack.com is offering a buy-one-get-one deal on two different products, the 4GB SanDisk Cruzer micro and the Gigaware VGA PC webcam, both priced at $19.99. The Canon Pixma all in one color printer is priced at $64.99 at Newegg.com. CompUSA.com is offering the 32GB Patriot Xporter XT for $64.99 with a $20 mail in rebate offer that drops the price down to $44.99.
Toshiba and manufacturing partner SanDisk on Tuesday announced they will cut production of NAND flash memory by 30 percent starting in January due to the global economic slowdown. With more production than there is demand, prices for the semiconductors have shrunk, with Toshiba's earnings suffering in the first half of the fiscal year. Before prices go back up, however, inventories need to be cleared out, investors say; the process is expected to prove difficult as demand is weak. Toshiba is not clear on how long the production cuts will last, or how they will affect its workforce.
SanDisk today reached out to the smaller but growing base of Macs in business with an updated version of the Cruzer Enterprise. The USB drive's 256-bit AES encryption now works with Mac OS X Tiger or Leopard and lets these Mac owners access the locked-down portion of the storage and manage passwords without using a Windows PC. Adding support now lets Mac users bring their drives to Windows PCs, or vice versa, without having to either disable security or use insecure drives, SanDisk claims.
SanDisk has collaborated with Veoh Networks to offer the Veoh Web Player on Cruzer USB flash drives. Users can browse Veoh.com's TV shows, movies, or special content, from any computer. The player can be used to create a library of personal video collections that can be viewed while online or offline. Personal video files can be password protected, preventing access if the drive is stolen or lost.
SanDisk raised the stakes in its competition against the iPod shuffle and Creative ZEN Stone with a new, 8GB version of the Sansa Clip. The capacity gives it storage for up to 2,000 songs and doubles the capacity of Creative's best ultra-small models and quadruple that of Apple's. It continues to hold the same four-line OLED display that lets it have full control over music while still rendering it small enough to attach to a belt or clothes through its namesake hook.
Apple's recent MacBook lineup and the iPhone may make it one of the better-positioned companies to survive a likely steep drop in spending during the holidays, according to new data from ChangeWave. The analyst firm says that a full third of all studied US notebook buyers, or 33 percent, plan to buy some form of Apple notebook during the season or within the next 90 days from the start of November. The number represents a slight boost from 29 percent in September and puts Apple's demand on par with Dell; HP continues to significantly trail behind at just 22 percent.
SanDisk on Wednesday said it has developed a way to eliminate one of the few performance bottlenecks of solid-state drives. A new flash file system known as ExtremeFFS uses a page-based method that no longer ties the logical location of data on the drive to its physical space. Instead, it dynamically writes and alters the position of data based on where it would be most efficient as well as the user's own habits.
Talks between Samsung and SanDisk have ended, with a letter sent by Samsung chief Yoon Woo Lee to SanDisk's Eli Harari and Irwin Federman, blasting its board for not acting to resolve a deal. The letter is intertwined with warning, about how SanDisk's recently posted quarter-billion dollar loss reflects the ailing state of its market. Lee also draws attention to SanDisk's "hurried renegotiaton [sic]" with Toshiba, as well as major job losses as being major signs it should have more closely considered Samsung's offer.
Flash memory maker SanDisk and software security developer McAfee have teamed up on a new USB drive, the SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise, that automatically scans for, detects and keeps harmful malicious software, or malware, out. The secure USB drive is being demonstrated this week at the Foucs 08 security conference and promises to prevent file transfers to the drive when it detects the PC it is connected to is infected, even without a firewall. Malware includes viruses, worms, Trojan horses and other malicious software, for which the Cruzer Enterprise scans and keeps from being copied onto the drive.
Toshiba on Monday announced it has acquired 30 percent of SanDisk's NAND flash memory production capacity for $1 billion. Toshiba has been previously interested in purchasing SanDisk entirely, after Samsung made a similar bid for the flash memory maker. Toshiba's purchase will allow it to boost its NAND memory capacity quicker and for less money than investing in its own operations. The two companies already have joint NAND operations that produce 300mm wafers, and the purchase represents a reshuffling of those assets between the companies.
SanDisk on Wednesday unveiled the Sansa slotMusic Player, its new MP3 player for listening to music on the go. According to the company, the plug & play, portable music player was specially designed for use with the new slotMusic cards available today in the United States. The company rolled out both a Sansa-branded player and new personalized, branded slotMusic players for popular artists such as Robin Thicke and ABBA -- both of which are shipping to U.S. stores today, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart and are expected to be available from retailers in Europe and other regions of the world in 2009.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
