Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung to create new memory card format

Designed to aid interoperability

14 September 2007 21:22 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and three other technology companies have announced that they will join forces to create a unified memory card for electronic devices by 2009.

The news, which is likely to be welcomed by consumers, aims to stop a multitude of memory card formats for a multitude of devices ranging from mobile phones to digital cameras.

Other companies signing up to the idea by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, a leading open-standards organisation in the semiconductor industry include Spansion Inc., STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments.

Announced earlier today, the new specification, dubbed Universal Flash Storage (UFS) will "reflect the industry's need for a universal memory solution that removes the need for adaptors to accommodate different removable memory card sizes".

The companies also hope that working together will help improve speed and performance enabling high-speed access to large multimedia files, while reducing power-consumption in consumer electronic devices.

The manufacturers say that mobile handsets and digital cameras will be the first to benefit from the universal open standard.