Windows Phone Thoughts: MultiMediaCards Make a Comeback

Has anyone ever heard of ATP? I haven't, but it looks like they're about to make a big splash in the memory card world. For those that don't know, the SD card standard is controlled by Panasonic, and when a company like Sandisk wants to make cards, they pay a royalty to Panasonic. MMC, on the other hand, is a royalty-free format governed by several companies. MMC cards came out before SD cards, but they had no momentum and topped out around 128 MB. The format seemed all but dead, yet somehow ATP has managed to crank out 512 MB MMC cards, and they have 1 GB cards on tap as well. Here's a blurb from their site:



"ATP's MultiMediaCards™ make your digital music (MP3s), digital photos and all other digital data more portable than ever before. Approximately the size of a postage stamp, ATP's MultiMediaCards are fully compliant with industry standards, and Plug and Play compatible. ATP MultiMediaCards achieve much higher read and write throughput speeds than leading competitors."

They have a PDF benchmark file that shows ATP MMC cards outperforming SD cards, which is something I haven't seen before. I hope we see some pricing competition for SD cards to prices will fall - 512 MB SD cards are still a little pricey, although they've certainly come down in price a great deal over the past six months.