128GB microSDHC Cards on the Way

Bigger is always better, or so they say. This always applies when it comes to storage space though, and it seems that the SanDisk Corporation, inventor of flash storage cards, is on its way of proving that once more. 

The company has already made available, last month, the 16GB microSD and M2 memory cards. Now, it seems to be working on developing 128GB mobile cards that should be available by 2011. This would basically mean that the phone users have might compete with the computer they have at home. 128GB means that they could store almost 20,000 high resolution photos, 134 full length movies, about 16,000 songs and countless other things, like documents, emails and such. It would be like having your own extra-mini-laptop that can also make phone calls.

The guys over at the Deccan Herald talked about the future of mobile memory cards with the Chief Operating Officer and one of the founders of US-based SanDisk, Sanjay Mehrotra. He said that, “The tiny thumb-nail-size micro card will have storage capacity equal to today’s PCs. That is the power of digital flash memory which is faster, smaller and needs less power to operate.” 

The possibility of having 128GB of information stored on a single device is indeed exciting for most mobile phone users. There is one thing that might not be so exciting though, and that is the price for these cards. As everybody knows, when a new device comes out on the market, it sells for a lot.

Right now, the price for an 8GB microSD card is somewhere around 30 USD. The price for a 16GB one is set at approximately 80 USD, meaning, more than double. Given all the above, we could infer that the price per 1GB is of about 3.75 USD so, 128GB could cost somewhere around 480 USD. Let's hope that, by the time the card is released, either the retail price will be lower or salaries will be a lot bigger.