The future market for mobile-phone memory will total almost $6 billion, according to some in the industry, and could surpass the potential of the massive desktop computer industry in just three years. Indeed, the amount of storage available in next year’s high-end mobile phones could surpass the total amount of storage available inside a laptop computer built only a few years ago.
“The handset market has reached an inflection point in memory demand,” said Ivan Greenberg, director of strategic marketing for Samsung Semiconductor Inc. “That’s great news.”
Although mobile-phone advancements such as color screens, integrated digital cameras, 3D games and MP3 players capture most of the industry’s attention, the memory segment has been evolving quietly by leaps and bounds. Most of the handsets available a few years ago counted memory capacity by the kilobyte, while today’s high-end phones offer up to 64 MB of onboard memory storage and 32 MB of execution memory. In two years, Greenberg predicts, those numbers will jump to as high as 256 MB of onboard memory and 128 MB of execution memory.
Further, a phone’s total storage space easily could grow to 1 GB or more if the manufacturer was to add support for removable memory cards-a relatively new innovation but one that is rapidly gaining steam.
Removable memory cards “are a growing facet of the market,” said Allen Leibovitch, program manager for wireless semiconductors with research and consulting firm IDC.
Naturally, it’s hard to imagine the need for gigabytes of storage in a mobile phone, a device that typically stores names and phone numbers and not much else. But similar concerns were voiced just a few decades ago during the rise of the desktop computer industry, only to be roundly refuted with pictures, videos, games and other applications.
“As the requirements grow, so will the amount of memory needed,” said Rex Sabio, product marketing manager for SanDisk Corp., which makes a variety of removable memory cards.
The rapid evolution of the mobile-phone memory market has given rise to a variety of technologies, products and players. However, IDC’s Leibovitch said the industry essentially can be broken down into two main areas: onboard memory and external memory.
Onboard memory runs inside the phone and cannot be removed. It is based primarily on flash technology, which is a solid-state memory that does not have moving parts. Most mobile phones feature NOR flash technology, which can store basic phone information like operational code and names and phone numbers. Intel Corp., Spansion (a joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Fujitsu), STMicroelectronics, Samsung and others sell NOR flash technology to the world’s handset manufacturers.
However, a newer type of flash technology is gaining traction in the market. NAND flash is available in a variety of new high-end phones and is more effective at handling multimedia content and applications. Toshiba and Samsung are among the leading suppliers of NAND flash. Although NAND flash offers a variety of benefits compared with NOR flash, most in the industry see the two technologies existing side by side for the foreseeable future, with basic phone memory functions stored on NOR and more advanced applications stored on NAND.
There is a second kind of onboard memory for mobile phones. Much like desktop computers, mobile phones also have random-access memory, or execution memory. This type of memory helps to perform functions like calling or taking a digital picture. SRAM is the most common type of execution memory, and Samsung, NEC Corp. and others supply this type of memory.
But SRAM too is being eclipsed by a newer variant. Mobile-phone makers are now slowly transitioning to mobile DRAM, a more advanced type of execution memory designed for multimedia functions. Although only a few high-end phones use DRAM today, those in the industry see it becoming the industry standard eventually.
“The cell phone is rapidly evolving into an entertainment agent and an information agent,” said Samsung’s Greenberg.
Adding further complexity to the market, mobile-phone makers typically combine various types of memory technology into multichip packages. Thus, one phone potentially could combine NAND flash with DRAM, two stacked DRAMs or NOR and NAND combined with DRAM. As mobile-phone makers continue to experiment with new types of devices, so too will the memory combinations become more complex.
“There are all kinds of configurations for this memory,” said IDC’s Leibovitch.
Although onboard memory can hold as much as 64 MB of information today, there is a new way to add even more storage. External memory cards allow mobile-phone users to install new content and applications using tiny, thumbnail-size chips, which easily can be swapped out with new chips. Several high-end phones available today feature external memory card slots, and the technology could give rise to a range of new business models. However, the external memory market is just as complex as the onboard memory market.
External memory cards come in a variety of formats. Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P. supports the Memory Stick protocol because its parent company Sony Corp. helped develop it. Memory Sticks today can hold up to 512 MB. Nokia Corp. supports the MMC specification in all of its products, and to date MMC cards can hold around 128 MB. Other handset makers including Motorola Inc. support the SD format, which can hold up to 1 GB, and miniSD format, which today can hold up to 256 MB. SanDisk and others sell memory cards, and the companies promise that storage capacity on the cards will only increase. To date, only high-end phones and smart phones feature removable memory cards, although the number of such devices is growing.
The decision to add an external memory slot “is a balance between the size of the device … and what the device is going to do,” said Suzanne Cross, Sony Ericsson’s product marketing manager. However, Cross added that the vast majority of phones in the future will support external memory cards.
Such cards present a range of new opportunities for carriers, handset makers and others. Nokia for example is distributing the games for its N-Gage mobile phone/video game device on removable MMC cards. Content including games, music and video could be loaded onto removable cards and then sold through retail outlets. Users also could load up their cards with content downloaded from a carrier’s network. Carriers could promote their services and data offerings through removable cards.
“We’re still right now in the infancy of the market,” said SanDisk’s Sabio. “We’re constantly improving the technology.”
Indeed, SanDisk recently released its new T-Flash product, which essentially bridges the gap between onboard memory and external memory. The company’s T-Flash product, which has been embraced by Motorola, sits behind the battery and SIM card inside a phone’s casing, but can be removed and replaced. SanDisk describes T-Flash as a “semi-permanent” memory, which allows users to move their information and content to a new T-Flash-capable phone. It also allows carriers to install their unique content into the phone easily without doing so during the manufacturing process. SanDisk said its T-Flash memory features up to 128 MB of capacity, which could increase to as much as 2 GB by 2006.
“As these things become more powerful, you’ll see the need for more storage,” Sabio said.
