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SanDisk will take the wraps off a 1GB Compact Flash card, the highest capacity yet, at the Comdex Fall show, which is scheduled to start next Monday in Las Vegas.

The card offers double the capacity of the company's current top-of-the-range card, a 512MB model that went on sale in the second quarter. The new card is expected to be available to consumers in early 2002, the company said Monday. SanDisk estimates the card will sell for about $800 per card, which is just under double the current price of SanDisk's current 512MB ImageMate card.

Higher capacity memory cards are much in demand among users of portable digital multimedia devices, such as digital still cameras, and music and movie players because of the large size of files often used with the devices. The new card should enable users to store more than 1000 digital images, more than 20 hours of digital music or several hours of video, SanDisk said.

"With a gigabyte of storage capacity, consumers will be able to store extended movie clips in the latest generation of digital cameras that offer this exciting new feature," said Nelson Chan, senior vice president and general manager of SanDisk's retail business unit. In October, the company introduced SanDisk Ultra Compact Flash cards, a new line of high-speed storage cards for the digital photography market.

Storage Competitors

Primary competition for the Compact Flash storage cards are the Memory Stick cards pushed by Sony and the Secure Digital (SD) memory cards. However, SanDisk is now also making flash memory and reselling Sony's Memory Sticks, in a deal announced earlier this fall. The two companies are also working together on developing and manufacturing of next-generation Memory Stick media.

Sony currently markets a 128MB Memory Stick. The company has said it expects to market a 256MB card in 2002, and release a 1GB Memory Stick by 2003.

Panasonic recently unveiled SD memory cards that can store 512MB of data, which the company estimates is enough to hold 400 images from a digital camera. A 256MB card is scheduled to be available at the end of this year, with an expected price of under $251.

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