By Ian Burley
8th September - 2001
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In a surprise move, the flash memory manufacturer, SanDisk, has done a deal with Sony to sell the latter’s memory stick product, but branded SanDisk.
The deal is surprising because SanDisk is a co-founder of the Secure Digital (SD) memory card standard. Together with Toshiba and Matsushita (Panasonic), SanDisk has been to be competing openly against the successful but proprietary Sony memory stick. SD is an open standard with some 300 licensees already signed up, while Sony has kept memory stick firmly to itself.
SanDisk also invented the Compact Flash memory card standard, which currently dominates the digital camera scene, especially at the higher end. Compact Flash (CF) is also an open standard these days. Both CF and SD are seen as arch-rivals to memory stick.
Suehiro Nakamura, executive deputy president of Sony Corporation, commented: "We are very pleased to announce the collaboration with SanDisk on Memory Stick. Our partnership with SanDisk, a world leader in memory cards, will allow us to increase Memory Stick market share and build a strong position to make Memory Stick as the standard of digital recording media in the world."
Meanwhile, SanDisk founder, president and CEO, Eli Harari, also commented: “We are very pleased that Sony has invited us to contribute our expertise and intellectual property in flash memory cards to jointly develop the next generation of Memory Stick.
And that’s the key - Sony doesn’t have next-generation NAND flash memory technology which is higher in density and faster than current generation NOR flash memory. SanDisk has that technology.
Although SanDisk is a key player in the SD family, it showed that it is not averse to hedging its bets by supporting SD in competition to its own baby, CF, in the first place. The same seems to apply to memory stick.
So will the move mean more competitive pricing of memory stick cards? Sony has recently reduced the price of memory stick, but some would argue this was simply in response to the reduction in price of CF and SD, as well as SmartMedia.
As SanDisk won’t be manufacturing memory stick cards itself, market supply logic suggests the deal won’t have an impact on prices. For that, you need third party manufacturers.
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DPN News service
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