Panasonic Announces 1GB SD Card at CeBiT

According to a Panasonic press release, “The SD Memory Card is a semiconductor memory card developed based on the four product concepts: large memory capacity, high-speed data transfer rate, about postage stamp-size compactness, and content protection.” The SD Memory Card was introduced in 1999 and has met with worldwide popularity, and as noted by Panasonic elsewhere in the press release, holds 40 percent of the memory card market.

The SD Memory Card is used in many digital devices ranging from PDA’s, PC’s, digital still cameras, mobile phones and digital video cameras, and the introduction of larger storage options is likely to be met with approval. Coupled with increased resolution and shrinking camera sizes by camera makers and the continuing demand for more storage from digital still and digital video camera consumers, Memory Card makers have been under pressure to supply smaller cards with greater capacity.

Similarly, the growing popularity of capturing video compressed in both MPEG4 and MPEG has forced card makers to create higher capacity memory cards and Panasonic claims that the Panasonic 1GB SD Card will “satisfy such needs for larger capacity, but also provides the high speed necessary to easily record and replay high-quality video images

According to Panasonic “the 1GB SD Memory Card has the capacity to store about 1300 [3-megapixel, Standard mode3] or about 400 [5-megapixel, fine-mode4] still images, about 9 hours5 [MPEG4, Normal mode] or about 40 minutes6 [MPEG2, Normal mode] video images respectively or about 22 hours7 of music. The 1GB SD Card uses a portion of the memory for copy protection which brings the card capacity to 944MB