SanDisk Drops a Fistful of New Products

Yes, a fistful (they're small). The company's IFA 2007 releases include a memory card that can jack cell phones up to 8GB storage capacity, a new SSD, and a high-speed card reader.

If this week’s IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin were a poker game, SanDisk just laid out its entire hand. The Milpitas-based company unleashed a slew of new products at the convention on Friday morning, including a card reader, 8GB memory cards for cell phones, and a new solid state drive for low-cost PCs.

In the memory-card arena, SanDisk pushed forth several new offerings. An 8GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) card for cell phones which will enable  compatible phones to carry the same amount of data as the highest capacity iPhone in a removable card. The M2 format is primarily used in Sony Ericsson phones. While SanDisk is shipping the cards out to phone manufacturers for evaluation now, they will make their retail appearance in the fourth quarter of 2007 at a price that hasn’t been announced.

For digital photographers and videographers, SanDisk also released two new high-speed memory cards, the SanDisk Ultra II in 4GB and an 8GB Memory Stick Pro Duo card. Both cards feature read and write speeds of 10MB/s. The Ultra II uses SanDisk’s proprietary hinge to interface with any USB port without cables, and retails for $79.99. The new Memory Stick Pro Duo is intended for hi-def video cameras and hi-res still cameras, and will sell for $159.99.

All those cards are nothing without a way to pull the data off them at the end of the day, and SanDisk introduced a new way to do that too. The SanDisk Multi Card ExpressCard Adapter has a slim profile but still manages to read six card formats: SD, SDHC, MultiMediaCard, MMCplus, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick PRO Duo and Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo. The card will retail for $29.99 in September.

Finally, the company also introduced a solid-state drive for use in low-cost PCs, such as Intel’s Classmate PC for developing countries. The uSSD 5000 will only come in capacities between 2GB and 8GB, but it’s small enough to embed on a motherboard and offers low cost, durability and energy efficiency.