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Tag: cameras

  • 2TB Memory Cards By 2010?


    Storage of consumer electronics could be boosted by as much as 2TB with the arrival of a new generation of memory cards.

    That’s the expectation of the SD Association, which suggest Secure Digital memory cards based on the new SDXC (extended capacity) specification could be out as early as next year.

    Initially they would offer a capacity of 64GB but this is expected to climb quickly to 2TB.

    The SDA announced the SDXC specification at the start of the year without being able to specify when products would become available.

    However, companies such as Panasonic have already announced plans to develop memory cards based on the new specification.

    The SD Association has about 1,100 member companies, including Toshiba and SanDisk, involved in the design, manufacture and sale of products using SD technology.

    Joseph Unsworth, research director, NAND Flash Semiconductors, at Gartner, said SDXC combines a higher capacity roadmap with faster transfer speeds as a means to exploit NAND flash memory technology.

    He said it makes a compelling choice for portable memory storage and interoperability.

    "With industry support, SDXC presents manufacturers with the opportunity to kindle consumer demand for more advanced handset features and functionality in consumer electronics behind the ubiquitous SD interface," he said.

    SD cards can be slotted into consumer electronics devices to store images, video or other data.

    The new specification will replace SD slots and media based on the older SDHC specification commonly used in devices.

    The SDXC specification upgrades the storage capacity and cuts the data-transfer bottlenecks that plagued earlier specifications.

    Shigeto Kanda, general manager at Canon, said SDXC is a large-capacity card that can store more than 4,000 RAW images, which is the uncompressed mode professionals use.

    He said that capacity, combined with the exFAT file system, increases movie recording time and reduces starting time to improve photocapturing opportunities.

    "Improvements in interface speed allow further increases in continuous shooting speed and higher resolution movie recordings," he said.

    "As a memory card well suited to small-sized user-friendly digital cameras, the SDXC specification will help consumers realize the full potential of our cameras."

    The new slots will be backward compatible and support older SD media. However, older SD slots will not support new media.

  • Forget Megapixels – Most Camera Phones Not Up To The Job


    When it comes to cameras – and that includes camera phones – many consumers are fixated by the megapixel count.

    Yet John Turner, product manager for multi-media at Symbian, said higher resolution was definitely no guarantee of quality.

    He said this was especially true since the majority of camera phone photos are taken in the darkened environs of bars and nightclubs.

    "There is a four to six megapixel sweet spot for camera phones," he said. "But customers have in their minds the idea that resolution equals quality, so they are always going to want more resolution.

    "The majority of pictures are taken in a pub or nightclub but only a quarter of all phones have in-built flash.

    "So camera phones are not catering for that primary use. That will change over the year to come and improve things a great deal."

    Camera Phone Sales Outstrip Cameras‘

    Camera phones have increased so rapidly in popularity since the first snap-on versions were introduced in Japan in 1999 that they now threaten the market for traditional digital cameras.

    So much so, that by 2009, more camera phones will have shipped cumulatively than "normal" cameras have shipped in the entire history of photography.

    Turner said the camera fitted well with the trend towards a convergence of digital devices, allowing it to be integrated with the cell phone, Internet and GPS.

    He said this was to the consumers’ benefit – with just one device to carry and charge, while allowing users to connect with social networking sites, tag photos with locations and so on.

    But this has also created a few challenges, according to Turner, because consumers now expect camera phones to function as well as cameras.

    So it’s now taken for granted that "standard" features, such as higher resolution, better storage performance, better battery life, smile detection and image editing, will also be on the camera phone.

    Megapixel Fixation

    The fact that consumers regard megapixels as a headline indicator of performance is something that retailers and manufacturers haven’t been quick to discourage.

    Indeed the megapixels count continues to climb rapidly, with 12 mpx expected to be offered on some handsets next year and 16 mpx the year after – putting them firmly in amongst the mid-range digital camera market.

    Ericsson AB of Sweden recently announced that through technologies such as “HSPA Evolution” and” LTE” (long term evolution), by the year 2012, they would develop mobile phones with cameras from 12-20 megapixel and Full HD video shooting capabilities.

    The future might also bring an XGA resolution display (1024×768 pixels) with a digital camera and new camcorder technologies to mobile phones.

    Turner said this striving for greater resolution didn’t necessarily translate into better photos, since issues such as shutter lag were making a "hard problem even harder".

    He said Symbian was working closely with partners such as Scalado to address these challenges.

    Symbian is also spending money on improving multi-media in general and making it easier for its partners to introduce new features, such as accelerometers and HD multi-media processing.

    Turner said this would be seen in big changes that were going to be made to the operating system by the end of the first half of 2009.

    So no more blurry, out-of-shot party pics then. What camera phones features do you regard as the most essential for developers to concentrate on?

  • There's No Such Thing As Too Much Storage

    As demand for mobile data storage keeps rising, the hard drive industry needs to work harder at adapting its technology and products to keep pace.


    Storage.biz-news.com spoke to Daniel Mauerhofer, of storage giant Western Digital, to find out more about this evolving market.

    Desktop computing remains the largest market for hard drives but the young upstart – consumer electronics – is the fastest growing.

    Demand for data storage is soaring in everything from PDAs, navigation systems and automotive applications to handheld devices that store music, books, news content, movies and television programs.

    In parallel with this is the need for portable data collection devices, something storage giant Western Digital (WD) has been quick to pick up on.

    It recently launched My Passport, a 500 GB capacity portable USB drive that is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

    Not so long ago it would have been inconceiveable to imagine how most consumers would use that amount of storage capacity – let alone in a mobile format.

    Yet Daniel Mauerhofer, senior PR manager EMEA for WD, said that since storage space was now quickly eaten up by even modest amounts of photo, video and music files, finding a use for half a Terabyte of storage wasn’t that difficult.

    He said the advent of compact cameras with the capacity for ever-larger resolution meant even just storing photographs required a great deal of memory space.

    “There’s no such thing as too much storage these days,” he said.

    WD was founded in Lake Forest, California in 1970 and has been manufacturing internal hard drives since 1990. It moved into the external drive market four years ago.

    While its principal markets – desktop and notebook computing – are expected to continue growing strongly, the launch of the My Passport portable series positions it strongly in the consumer electronics sector.

    This hard drive market, which today accounts for sales of 81 million units worth more than USD $6 billion, is expected to grow to 220 million units in 2010 – a compound annual growth rate of 29 per cent.

    Mauerhofer said external drives generated very little revenue for WD three years ago.

    “Now they represent a fifth of our turnover. It’s a billion dollar business now,” he said. “People are spending considerable time on the internet and its penetration is getting better, so people are downloading more and more. We do not see that stopping.”

    For this reason, the consumer rather than corporate user is seen as being the principal buyer of My Passport portable drives.

    This is borne out by the sleek design and color choices for the drives – a far step from the customary image of external drives as functional “blocks”.

    Technology is evolving to cope with the ever-increasing demand for portable storage

    Mauerhofer said the industry currently used Perpindicular Magnetic Recording (PMR), which still had potential for greater capacity.
    So much so that he predicted that within the next 18 months a 1 Terabyte storage drive would become available.

    “There is a big need in the B2B enterprise space for huge capacity coupled with small form factor and it’s a safe bet to say you will find them in our portable products as well,” he said.

    However, Mauerhofer said there would come a point when even the PMR technology reached a capacity limit. This would open up the market to replacement technology such as Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording.

    The consumers’ appetite for storage appears insatiable – but technology has managed to keep ahead of the game. Can it continue to do so?