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Sony's Memory Stick Gets Stickier

Removable memory card gains support, but no products yet.

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

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Sony is increasing the stakes in the battle to become the dominant memory card format.

On Thursday the company announced more industry support for its chewing gum-size Memory Stick memory card, which was announced by the company last year. Meanwhile, Sony is also demonstrating a range of prototype devices based on the storage format here at the CeBIT trade show.

With the new licensees Sony will have 46 companies supporting Memory Stick, although none of the makers has yet to produce products featuring support for the storage device. Sony itself is busy promoting the system and has since last year been including drives for Memory Stick in everything from notebook computers and digital still cameras to digital audio players.

The devices being demonstrated here include video and image viewers using the Memory Stick. The video viewer allows users to watch videos stored on the Memory Stick, although with a current maximum capacity of 64MB, the card can store only six minutes of MPEG-1 format video.

The image viewer accepts Memory Stick cards and also almost any other media card format with a PC Card adapter, Sony says. In addition it includes a recordable CD drive to allow users to create their own disks of images.

The proprietary Sony format counts Smart Media, Compact Flash, and the recently launched Secure Digital card among its competitors.

New licensees of the Memory Stick include Acer Laboratories, Compaq, Mitsubishi Electric, Samsung Electronics, and Texas Instruments, Sony says.

TI will also adopt Sony's ATRAC3 compression system and MagicGate copy protection technology for use in its own semiconductor products, according to Sony.

The chances of Memory Stick becoming a cross-platform format between portable electronics devices and automobiles was further increased with the naming of a host of auto industry backers. General Motors, Holden, Opel, Saab, and Vauxhall joined Audi AG and Volkswagen AG as licensees, and auto electronics makers Fujitsu and Xanavi Informatics also announced support for the format, Sony says.

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