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The following information is true and accurate at the time of publication.
June 3, 2002
Memory Stick Supporting Companies Gather at Second Memory Stick Partners Forum
- Cumulative Worldwide Shipment of Memory Stick Reaches 20 Million -
Monday, June 3, 2002, Tokyo, Japan
- "Memory Stick" IC recording media supporting companies
today gathered at the Memory Stick Partners Forum. It was
the second time to hold the Forum, and the participants
included hardware manufacturers, software developers, service
providers, telecommunications operators, content holders,
and component makers (number of Memory Stick supporting
companies: total 246 as of May 31, 2002.) The objective
of the Forum was to give participants an opportunity to
exchange the latest information about Memory Stick technology
in order to deepen technical and business knowledge of Memory
Stick's easy use and power to link a wide variety of electronic
products.
At the forum, the supporting companies shared information
about their current Memory Stick business situation, their
Memory Stick road maps, promotion plans and relevant technological
information such as application solutions and compatibility
verification. Forty-seven of the supporting companies exhibited
Memory Stick compliant products during the Forum.
One of the Memory Stick Forum's highlights was a new 16MB
multi-purposed "Memory Stick Duo" IC recording media currently
scheduled for market introduction in July 2002. Taking full
advantage of its compact size and thin structure, the Memory
Stick Duo is well suited for a wide range of popular consumer
products such as cellular phones and compact audio players.
In addition, content recorded on the Memory Stick Duo can
be played back on a variety of standard Memory Stick products
by using a Memory Stick Duo adapter. The Memory Stick Duo
is approximately one third the size of the dimensions and
a half the weight of a standard Memory Stick. While further
popularizing the concept of Memory Stick's networking world
by its compatibility with standard Memory Stick products
(using an adapter), the Memory Stick Duo indicates the next
phase of Memory Stick development by offering a flash memory
recording media for ultra small portable devices.
Future new Memory Stick products also include the "Memory
Stick-ROM" which has been designed as a future package media
for music, image contents and other data. By adopting the
mask ROM process, it will be possible to commercialize "Memory
Stick-ROM" at a lower cost to regular Memory Stick. A 8MB
Memory Stick-ROM is ready for mass production.
Also announced during the Forum was the introduction of
a new application tentatively called "Memory Stick-R" which
will further expand Memory Stick's networking world. In
a natural expansion of standard Memory Stick technology,
"Memory Stick-R" is being positioned to offer reasonably
priced, write-once media, which will enhance the relationship
between content storage and Memory Stick. The new reasonably
priced, easy-to-use storage application can further develop
the content business by making it more attractive to users.
Since its market introduction in September 1998, Memory
Stick has evolved from a storage media for recording picture
images and/or computer data to a broad networking media
used for network services such as the Internet, telecommunication
and multimedia Kiosks, etc. Cumulative shipments of Memory
Stick worldwide in March 2002 have reached 20 million, and
worldwide cumulative shipments of Memory Stick compliant
products have also reached 20 million units at the end of
March 2002. It took approximately three years to achieve
the first 10 million shipments of Memory Stick, however
in the last 12 months sales of Memory Stick have reached
additional 10 million shipments. This reflects a rapid growth
in Memory Stick and Memory Stick compliant products (especially
audio products incorporated a copyright protection technology
"MagicGate") and a growing momentum among Memory Stick Partners.
Incidentally 20% of total Memory Stick sale in fiscal year
2001 attributes to "MagicGate" copyright protected Memory
Stick.
Memory Stick compliance is expected to be adopted in even more product categories over next few years to meet growing consumer needs. Cumulative shipments of Memory Stick are expected to reach 60 million in year 2003 and 120 million in year 2004. In parallel, cumulative shipments of memory Stick compliant products are expected to reach 100 million respectively in year 2004.
The companies that support Memory Stick aim to strengthen their relationship in order to further develop and promote Memory Stick and its various applications, as a platform to link people with a wide range of content and services in the coming ubiquitous networking era.
<Reference>
Memory Stick Web Site URL
Home page for developers:
http://www.memorystick.org
Home page for general customers:
http://www.memorystick.com
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