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"Why is the memory card market so chaotic? Isn't it good to unify into the same format? Shen Ying was very puzzled by this, and she always believed that this disorderly competition would only cause a waste of resources.

"It's not just a matter of interest!" Fan Wuxian replied, "This involves a battle for standards, and everyone hopes to fight their opponents by establishing their own standards, how can it be unified?" At most, it is through market competition to survive the fittest, so that the yellow sand can be exhausted and the gold can be left. ”

"It's all the fault of interests—" Shen Ying said.

Fan Wuxian suddenly remembered a story, so he said, "In the Book of Genesis in the Bible, there is a story of the Tower of Babylon. The survivors after Noah's Ark had numerous offspring, and since they were all three sons from Noah, all spoke the same language and the same accent. And they were going to build the Tower of Babel in the place of Shinar. But God does not allow mortals to reach their own heights, so Jehovah confuses their accents, making it impossible for people to communicate with each other, to unify their thoughts, and to doubt and quarrel. The Tower of Babylon was abandoned halfway through, and the consistent language was disrupted. ”

Don't think this is just a scene from the biblical story, the modern-day Tower of Babylon is playing out in the realm of memory cards.

At the Electronic Entertainment Exhibition, which opened on May 19, Sony Computer Entertainment showcased the next generation of handheld PSP game consoles, and what attracted attention was that Sony had developed a new storage disc for PSP, a general-purpose media disk with a diameter of 6cm and a storage capacity of 1.8GB.

This is the third type of memory developed by Sony, and before that, there was the MiniDisk and memory stick, which were developed specifically for the Walkman. In addition to Sony, Sandisk's CompactFlash card, or CF card, developed in 1994, is still a popular low-cost storage option for most digital products.

Toshiba's SmartMedia card, used by Olympus, Fujifilm and other companies as a storage device for their digital cameras, ** card although called smart card, but not smart at all, it is just a memory chip packaged, itself does not contain control circuits, all read and write operations are completely dependent on the device that uses it.

In addition, the MMC card launched by Siemens in 1997 and the SD card jointly created by Toshiba and Panasonic are more popular. If you don't think the variety is enough, you can also add Fuji is not satisfied with Toshiba's ** card, and Olympus is independent and launched a smaller XD card, which is not counting many technical specifications such as Click that are not popular.

In fact, the technical idea of these various incompatible memory cards is the same, they all use a combination of ATA controller and Flash memory, and the difference is only in the packaging mode and interface.

As digital cameras, PDAs, smart phones and other digital devices become personal consumer goods in the new era, people record historical pictures and communicate to create more and more information data, and it should be normal to use memory cards interchangeably between different types of digital devices, making the problem that memory cards cannot be used interchangeably is greatly highlighted.

In Fan Wuxi's personal opinion, it is precisely because each manufacturer artificially manufactures different standards for memory cards that could have been of the same origin in order to establish their own memory card standards.

It may seem that the pursuit of commercial interests can explain all this, but the problem seems to be more than that.

Vinson of Pen Computer magazine once wrote an article accusing Sony of quasi-monopoly on memory cards, because Sony's memory sticks can only be used on Sony electronic devices, and these electronic devices do not support memory cards of other specifications by default, Sony consumers often fall into the trap of buying a Sony device and having to buy a second one, because only then can their data on the memory stick be shared and exchanged.

Behind the battle of standards there is not only a technical battle, but also a battle for market operation, memory cards can be regarded as a newborn in the era of digital consumption, when the market is not yet fully mature, the major manufacturers are fighting openly and secretly hope that their technical standards are accepted by everyone. If you think about it, you can see that the reason for the confusion of memory card specifications is closely related to the revolution in consumer electronics in the digital age, and Sony is just a businessman who will make the most of the process of technological change.

Film, tape, CD, and even DVD did not have the same mess as memory cards in the past, because there were global standard-setters, and the technology of traditional analog storage media was not changing as fast as digital memory cards. This may seem unanticipated by the proponents of the global technological revolution, who see digital disruption as more important, and the specific problem of a small memory card swap seems trivial in comparison.

In Hebrew, the word chaos is pronounced Babylon, and according to the book of Genesis, the Tower of Babylon undoubtedly added the world's first profession that should not have appeared: translation.

And now in the new digital era that is gradually approaching, the chaotic status quo of memory cards has undoubtedly reproduced the Tower of Babylon phenomenon, and the result is a multi-format card reader, a seemingly redundant product, and this year's sales have exceeded one billion dollars.

"This is competition, do everything-" Fan Wuxian said with some emotion, "Now we are also paying close attention to the progress in this area, and we are inclined to a new standard, TF card." ”

TF card, also known as Micro SD Card, is also designed with SD architecture, and the size is almost the size of a fingernail.

Before the introduction of Micro SD, mobile phone manufacturers used embedded memory, and although these modules were easy to assemble and design, they had the problem of not being able to adapt to the actual needs of the trend because their capacity was limited and there was no room for upgrade.

Micro SD imitates the application mode of SIM card, so that the same card can be used in different models of mobile phones, so that mobile phone manufacturers no longer have to worry about the development and design of plug-in cards, so Micro SD is enough to be called a portable storage IC.

THE CARD CURRENTLY EXISTS IN THE LAB, NOT IN SHAPE, AND WAS JOINTLY DEVELOPED BY MOTOROLA AND SANDISK, AND HAS NOT YET BEEN OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED. According to information obtained by the intelligence department of Fan's Investment Group, this is an ultra-small card, about a quarter of the size of an SD card, which can be regarded as the smallest memory card at present.

TF card can be used by SD card converter, when the SD card is used, the adapter can be used on devices that use the SD card as a storage medium.

In fact, TF cards are mainly developed for camera phones to capture large images and download large video clips, so TF cards can be used to store personal data, such as digital photos, MP3s, games, mobile phone applications and personal data, etc., which also set up a copyright protection management system to protect downloaded music, images and games.

On top of this, it is also possible to consider adding encryption to the new TF card to protect personal data, financial records and health and medical documents in the future.

The compact size of the TF card allows manufacturers to adopt this design regardless of the size of the phone, and another flexibility is that the supplier can replace it at any time according to the customer's needs before delivery, which is not available in embedded flash memory.

"Since you Fan have such a plan, do you have a sample?" Shen Ying is most concerned about practicality.

Fan Wuxian replied, "The main technical performance parameters have been obtained in the laboratory, and it seems that the other party has no intention of launching it immediately, so we plan to launch this technology first, but once it is launched, Motorola and SANDISK will definitely be very annoyed, and I need to be prepared to deal with all kinds of reactions." ”

"You can get such advanced technology?" Shen Ying looked very surprised.

"There is nothing difficult in the world, but I am afraid of people who have a heart, we have been tracking this technology for a long time, and we have naturally gained something, and our technology accumulation in this area is also very sufficient, and this technology is not very profound, combined with the strength of our chip production and research and development department, it is not a big problem. It's just that even so, there are still some patent issues in this, and I think there are still some fees to pay, but not too much. Fan replied.

The key problem is that TF card still uses SD architecture, so patent problems in this area are inevitable, but compared to the application prospect of TF card, Fan Wuzhi feels that this cost is worth it, because he now basically occupies a monopoly position in the domestic mobile phone market, in such a large market, once a large number of TF cards are applied, how much income will it bring to himself?

Especially if you can consider entering the market of digital cameras or related products in the future, then the application prospect of TF card is still very broad, especially when you say that Kodak or some other digital camera manufacturers also use their own standards, the effect is better.

In any case, the domestic market, must be monopolized by themselves, otherwise it will become very troublesome in the future, for Motorola's old rival Nokia and other mobile phone manufacturers, Fan Wuxian can give them some discounts, recommend them to use their own memory card standards, even if it is a little upside down.

The biggest advantage of those manufacturers is not based on the production of memory cards, and it should be easier to accept this problem, after all, whose product standards are different?

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