July 21, 2006 Demand for high capacity cards continues to increase as storage-intensive applications such as high-quality digital cameras and digital video camcorders come into the mainstream. In order to facilitate increased card capacity, a new SD 2.00 specification to support 4GB to 32GB capacities has been developed by the SD Association, and cards meeting this spec will be signified by SD High Capacity (SDHC). The first to market of the new SDHC cards comes from SanDisk which will introduce a new 4-gigabyte SD High Capacity (SDHC) card in the fourth quarter, making it the industry’s highest capacity SD card. Though standard SD and SDHC cards look identical in size and shape, only SDHC-compatible products will be able to accept the new SDHC cards and the new format is not backwards compatible with legacy SD format host devices. More SDHC compatible devices are expected to be available in the second half of 2006. To ensure compatibility, look for the SDHC logo on cards and host devices (cameras, camcorders, etc.)
SDHC cards are rated Class 2 for speed (a guaranteed minimum data-transfer rate of 2MB/sec), will be bundled with the MicroMate USB 2.0 reader and are expected to be available in the fourth quarter of this year. These new readers work with both SDHC and SD cards.
Chris Chute, research manager at IDC, said, “Consumers are beginning to demand next-generation image and video capture features in smaller devices. SDHC, while only supported by a few manufacturers and camera models now, is sure to be adopted by the imaging market as HD video recording and higher-resolution photography necessitates larger capacities.”
The recommended retail pricing will be announced closer to the launch date.
