Release issued by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd:
Samsung Introduces New Line of Multimedia Cards in Mass Production for Mobile Applications
Samsung reinforces leadership position in the memory card market; densities range from 16MB to 128MB
Seoul, Korea, April 16, 2003: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world's leader in advanced semiconductor memory technology, today announced mass production of its multimedia cards (MMCs) which are used in mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, and other handheld products. The MMC line supports high storage capacity and rapid transmission of still photos and moving pictures, which are now essential features of top-end 2.5G and 3G mobile phones. The 128MB card stores 2,500 still photographs, 32 MP3 music files or 20 minutes of video.
"Samsung's strength in flash memory technology has enabled the company to offer a full range of MMC products in a variety of densities that meet the industry's needs today," said Tom Quinn, vice president of U.S. memory sales and marketing. "Major mobile phone manufacturers can design more compact phones with memory card slots rather than building in memory chips." The Samsung MMC line is available in densities of 16 Megabytes (MB), 32MB, 64MB and 128MB in both regular and reduced size versions. 256MB and 512MB versions will be introduced in third quarter this year.
The coin-sized reduced size-multimedia card (RS-MMC) has a form factor of 2.4cm by 1.8cm, approximately half the size of a standard MMC and the smallest card form factor among all memory cards. The use of an extender makes the RS-MMC backward compatible with existing digital camera and PDA models. Samsung's multimedia cards include a NAND flash memory component and a controller, and the memory capacity is determined by the density of the built-in NAND flash memory for which Samsung has strong market leadership.
Samsung's MMCs operate on 3.3 volts and can read or write data at an industry-leading 1.3MB per second. Moving picture streams of VGA quality (a million -pixels) can be stored in real time.
Samsung's MMC line-up will be further enhanced by energy-thrifty dual 1.8V/3.3V MMC, and High-Speed MMC to be available later this year. High-Speed MMC specification has been introduced lately by MMC association and boasts burst data rate of 52MB per second, the fastest of Flash cards.
In September 2002, Samsung Electronics became the world's first manufacturer to apply the 90-nanometer design rule to develop a 2-gigabit NAND flash memory chip and the company will apply its cutting-edge technology to memory cards as well for ultra-high capacity such as 1GB.
Samsung's enhanced multimedia card line up will be responsive to the increasing demand as the company expects the global MMC and RS-MMC market to reach $200 million in 2003 and jump to $500 million in 2004.
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About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, and digital convergence technology. Samsung Electronics employs approximately 70,000 people in 87 offices in 47 countries. Samsung Electronics is the world's leading producer of advanced semiconductors, TFT-LCDs, CDMA mobile phones, monitors and VCRs. Samsung Electronics consists of four main business units: Device Solution Network, Digital Media Network, Telecommunication Network and Digital Appliance Network Businesses.
The Device Solution Network specializes in semiconductor and TFT LCD display products for industrial, mobile and advanced computing applications, offering a full line of key solutions of DRAMs, SRAMs, Display Driver ICs, Smart Card ICs, TFT LCD panels and Flash memories. The Device Solution Network operates 11 overseas sales subsidiaries and mass production facilities to maximize on hand customer support. For more information, visit our website at www.samsungsemi.com Samsung Semiconductor Inc., a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., is located in San Jose, Calif. More information can be found at www.usa.samsungsemi.com/.
Samsung Semiconductor Europe, a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., is headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany and London, UK with sales offices all over Europe. More information can be found at http://www.samsungsemi.de
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