SanDisk 1 GB SD Card Now Shipping

SanDisk is now shipping to retailers its 1 GB SD card. Until recently, the largest SD cards have been 512 MB.

With a gigabyte of space, consumers will be able to store up to 30 hours of digitally compressed music, over five hours of MPEG-4 compressed video, or more than 1000 high-resolution digital images.

This card uses a "stackable" packaging technology jointly implemented with Sharp Corporation of Japan. This new package employs a low-cost, high-yielding die-stacking process that is designed to enable SanDisk to double the memory capacity without increasing the size of the card.

It has a suggested retail price of $499.99. However, Mobile Planet is taking pre-orders for it at $389.95.

SanDisk originally announced this card in March of last year. At that time it said the cards would be available in the third quarter but it must have run into problems that delayed the release.

SanDisk isn't alone in this category. Silicon Power has announced that it is also introducing a 1 GB SD card. Green House, a Japanese company, has also said it intends to begin offering a 1 GB SD card in late January. Nevertheless, SanDisk's is the first card to be widely available in the U.S.

SD card readers are built into a wide variety of handhelds, both Pocket PC and Palm OS.

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