Is the miCard vaporware?

A while ago the multimedia card association announced a new memory card
format which, according to them, would be vastly superior to any memory
card standard in existence, would be cheaper and, above all, would be
adopted by the leading tech companies as the memory card standard.

That was over half a year ago and to this day there isn't a single miCard
being sold, let alone a miCard-enabled product.

So what happened to that format? Is it dead in the water?


Rui Maciel

Rui Maciel wrote:
> A while ago the multimedia card association announced a new memory card
> format which, according to them, would be vastly superior to any memory
> card standard in existence, would be cheaper and, above all, would be
> adopted by the leading tech companies as the memory card standard.
>
> That was over half a year ago and to this day there isn't a single miCard
> being sold, let alone a miCard-enabled product.
>
> So what happened to that format? Is it dead in the water?
>
>
> Rui Maciel

Google

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com

Rui Maciel wrote:
> A while ago the multimedia card association announced a new memory card
> format which, according to them, would be vastly superior to any memory
> card standard in existence, would be cheaper and, above all, would be
> adopted by the leading tech companies as the memory card standard.
>
> That was over half a year ago and to this day there isn't a single miCard
> being sold, let alone a miCard-enabled product.
>
> So what happened to that format? Is it dead in the water?
>
>
> Rui Maciel

Two developments would be necessary. The packaging has to be developed.
And a controller with both interfaces would have to be developed. That
might take a bit of time. Since the companies mentioned are so worried
about licensing costs, they may not want to leverage existing technology,
which would slow them further. And dilution, with the sheer number of
standards for flash storage devices, means there is precious little
mind share with consumers. Just another adapter to curse.

http://www.mmca.org/home

Paul

Paul wrote:

> Two developments would be necessary. The packaging has to be developed.
> And a controller with both interfaces would have to be developed. That
> might take a bit of time. Since the companies mentioned are so worried
> about licensing costs, they may not want to leverage existing technology,
> which would slow them further. And dilution, with the sheer number of
> standards for flash storage devices, means there is precious little
> mind share with consumers. Just another adapter to curse.

One of the advantages of the new miCard format that was touted was it's
compatibility with existing formats like USB mass storage device and MMC.
That would lead to believe that the miCard could be easily adopted by the
consumers even if there wasn't a single miCard product in the market. After
all, that format competes directly with the USB flash drive market but also
the MMC market, with the added advantage of the user not needing any
specialized card reader nor a PC connector for any MMC device to be able to
transfer information to and from PCs.

That is a huge advantage on it's own which is guaranteed to gain the "mind
share" of a lot of consumers. So why exactly aren't we seeing them being
sold today?


Rui Maciel

Rui Maciel wrote:
> Paul wrote:
>
>> Two developments would be necessary. The packaging has to be developed.
>> And a controller with both interfaces would have to be developed. That
>> might take a bit of time. Since the companies mentioned are so worried
>> about licensing costs, they may not want to leverage existing technology,
>> which would slow them further. And dilution, with the sheer number of
>> standards for flash storage devices, means there is precious little
>> mind share with consumers. Just another adapter to curse.
>
> One of the advantages of the new miCard format that was touted was it's
> compatibility with existing formats like USB mass storage device and MMC.
> That would lead to believe that the miCard could be easily adopted by the
> consumers even if there wasn't a single miCard product in the market. After
> all, that format competes directly with the USB flash drive market but also
> the MMC market, with the added advantage of the user not needing any
> specialized card reader nor a PC connector for any MMC device to be able to
> transfer information to and from PCs.
>
> That is a huge advantage on it's own which is guaranteed to gain the "mind
> share" of a lot of consumers. So why exactly aren't we seeing them being
> sold today?
>
> Rui Maciel

I suppose it might depend on how far ahead of finalizing the specification,
that the members could be working on the design. It might actually take
longer to perfect the packaging, than to make the chips.

Paul