Nokia is King when it comes to mobile phones, accounting for a whopping 40% of the market worldwide. In the smartphone market Nokia are an even bigger player, with 52.9% of the market, and now being the sole owner of the Symbian Operating System means that 65% of smartphone owners worldwide use their OS

Apple iPhone accounts for just 6.5% of the smartphone market, meaning that they lag some way behind the likes of Nokia, and RIM (the makers of the Blackberry). Also surprising is that more smartphone users have Windows on their phones, than Apple’s software.

So what does all this mean?

Nokia’s N95

Well it means that Nokia know what they are doing, their N-Series of smartphones have been very popular. So popular in fact that their N95 was dubbed ‘iPhone Killer’, when it went up against the first iPhone.

A couple of months ago Apple launched their new iPhone and now Nokia is hitting back with the N96.

Nokia got it right with the N95 for many reasons, such as the GPS, 3G, and of course their microSD card expansion slot. The iPhone came with 4GB or the largest 5GB of storage space, and there was no way to expand that, a shocking omission in todays storage hungry world. The N95 was compatible with microSD cards up to 2GB, meaning that for less than £10 it was possible to even up and then better the iPhone’s storage.

Nokia’s N96

The N96 goes even further in this regard, as it had to in order to compete with the iPhone which has 16GB of internal storage. The N96 matches this, but of course has a microSD card slot and supports SDHC cards up to 16GB, giving a total storage capacity of 32GB! And that’s without swapping cards.

It’s amazing that Apple have missed this once again, the customers that this kind of phone is aimed at are going to need as much storage as possible for their MP3 and videos. Why buy a phone that stores 12,000 MP3s or 40 hours of video (iPhone) when you can have a phone that stores 24,000+ MP3s and 80+hours of video?

The iPhone, like most other Apple devices also has a built in battery, which was always going to be a problem and despite the complaints and criticism, the new iPhone has a built in battery too. Other complaints about the new iPhone are the 2 mega pixel camera, the same as the original iPhone – the N96 has a 5 mega pixel camera.

iPhone Style

The Apple of course has the edge when it comes to style, although the N96 doesn’t look half bad itself, and desirability, but this is all thanks to clever marketing. At the end of the day iPhone users are a niche market, Nokia are ahead of the game in almost all respects in the smartphone market.

Smartphone users want hot swappable expandable storage so that they can simply insert a flash memory card and access the documents, MP3s or videos on it on many different types of devices and unfortunately the Apple iPhone cannot deliver this.

Technorati Tags: Horizon Flash Memory, Memory, Storage, microSD, SDHC, Flash Card, Nokia, iPhone, N95, N96, Smartphone, Blackberry

MiniDiscs just didn’t take off, there were compatibility issues, the hardware was expensive, it wasn’t widely supported by the record labels and recordable CDs were launched around the same time.

SlotMusic

Despite this lesson from history, and the recent format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, Sandisk today launced their replacement for the CD, SlotMusic.

SlotMusic is in effect a microSD memory card loaded with an album of the buyers choice. These 1GB microSD cards will also include pictures and videos and the intro video on the SlotMusic website also implies  that owners will be able to add their own documents and information to the cards, just like any other microSD card.

Pricing

As usual with these new technologies, the price remains the same. Prices are expected to be about the same as a CD, about £8.99, when SlotMusic is launched in the UK later this year. Like the price of downloads, the logic behind this is unclear. MicroSD cards are pretty cheap, Horizon Flash Memory sell 1GB microSD memory cards for just £2.99.

With microSD cards this cheap, it is possible to buy two 2GB microSD memory cards for the price of one SlotMusic album, which means that even at MP3′s highest quality (320 kbps – what SlotMusic is stored at) an owner of a 2GB microSD memory card could fit almost 30 albums of their choice on their own card (and about 60 with their two cards).

Moreover they could fit six albums stored in the far superior FLAC format (equivalent to CD quality) on their card. This does seem to make the SlotMusic format appear to be something of a waste of space.

Recent events regarding DRM in downloaded music and its removal has shown that today’s music lovers do not wish to be tied to proprietary formats, they expect portability and choice. Having just one album per card means having to change the disc over when wanting to listen to another album or when all the tracks have been played; for those used to having thousands of tracks at their finger tips, this will be seen as a major inconvenience. No matter how small microSDs are, carrying around your entire music collection on these cards is just not an option.

So why on earth does SanDisk believe there are people willing to become tied to this new format?

Compatibility

If there is one thing that SlotMusic has going for it, it is compatibility. The music is encoded as MP3s with a 320 kbps bitrate. This ensures compatibility with almost all platforms, from PCs running Windows or Linux, through to Macs. Most mobile phones will also play MP3s and most also accept microSD cards. The USB cable that also comes with the SlotMusic card ensures it can be played on almost anything, with one notable exception. Apple’s iPod/iPhone.

Creating a new music format that isn’t compatible with the world’s No.1 selling portable music player was a bit of a gamble, and to be fair the problem is more of Apple’s making rather than that of SanDisk as Apple’s iPhone and iPod have neither card slots nor USB slots.

Whoever the blames lies with, SanDisk has lost a large chunk of its potential customer base because of it.

The lack of DRM in the music means that owners can transfer their songs to their PC and then to their iPod/iPhone’s internal storage, but then they can already do that using iTunes or CDs.

Over engineering

This is course is probably the biggest flaw in the SlotMusic format. The first thing most users are going to do is copy their music from the SlotMusic card onto their PC so that they have their music collection in one place, and either then use the 1GB microSD flash memory card as spare storage, or put it on a shelf somewhere, just like they would a CD.

As with CDs, sooner or later they are going to realise that they can save time, space and effort by just downloading the music directly to their computer at which point they will stop purchasing SlotMusic altogether.

While SanDisk’s new format is a noble idea, it is in many respects a step backward and has over complicated what is becoming a quick and straightforward process – getting music onto a portable device. 

MiniDisc or sliced bread

It’s unlikely that the SlotMusic format will be the next big thing and the reactions on the web seem to confirm this:

Engadget.com
“…we half-facetiously asked SanDisk’s reps if they expected us to carry around a stack of individual microSD albums, they didn’t laugh when they said yes, and even told us that slotMusic media binders would be available at launch…”

jupiterresearch.com
The success of the format depends upon consumers opting to walk into a participating store (which may well be an issue) chose from a probably limited catalogue (anyone remember the pitiful sight of MD album sections in music shops?) and then remove their existing memory card to slot the album in. Begs the question, why wouldn’t they just download it from an online store and sideload it?

In all likelihood the SlotMusic format will disappear in the same way that SanDisk’s last attempt did back in 2005, the Gruvi TrustedFlash, which was:

“…the first removable flash memory card of its type to be sold with premium music content…”

This format too died a quiet death.

Personally I keep far more on my mobile phone’s microSD card than just music and so taking it out to play an album, which annoyingly entails removing the battery, just isn’t an option. I’d be far more likely to copy the music to my PC and then copy the whole album to my phone’s 2GB microSD card, along with all my other albums.

Of course if I am going to do that, I’d rather stick with downloads or, if I have to have the physical disc, the better quality CDs.

Judging by the reactions to this launch, I am not alone and I wouldn’t be surprised if the launch is the last we hear of SlotMusic.

Technorati Tags: SlotMusic, SanDisk, Horizon Flash Memory, microSD, MicroSD Card, Music, MP3, Flash Memory, 1GB microSD, Music Storage, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner Music, Mobile Phone

“We’re not thinking about fighting Sony, but about how many people we can get to play games. The thing we’re thinking about most is not portable systems, consoles, and so forth, but that we want to get new people playing games.”

I don’t think even he could have foreseen just how popular it would become and just what a difference the Nintendo Wii would make to the gaming world.

The machine is unbelievably popular, and as he noted, not just in the traditional market. We now see Nintendo Wii’s in the homes of the traditional gamers parents, their grandparents and even in nursing homes. Something that was inconceivable before the Wii came along.

Secure Digital Cards

The Wii isn’t much compared to the other next generation consoles, in fact it barely measures up specification wise to the XBox, let alone the XBox 360. It is also lacking in the storage department, only having 512MB of storage (the Xbox had about 10GB), but it does allow owners to add pictures and files from their own SD cards.

A smart move by Nintendo, the Xbox 360 uses it’s own propriety memory cards, but the SD card has become the de facto standard for flash memory cards in recent years, with most people having several cards from digital cameras, PDAs, mobile phones and now even sat-navs, lying around the home. Not to mention the fact that they can also use the newer miniSD and microSD cards as well with an adaptor. SD cards are a very cheap form of storage, allowing users to more than double the storage capacity of their Wii for less than £3.

Secure Digital High Capacity Cards

Sadly, despite coming to market several months after SDHC, the Nintendo Wii does not support SDHC cards and this has caused some issues for those looking to expand their Nintendo Wii’s storage capacity.

SDHC itself is something of a murky area, many manufacturers and retailers do not do enough to make customers aware of what SDHC is, why it is different from standard SD, or even that it is different.

SDHC is a completely different standard to standard SD and is not backwards compatible. There is more information on SDHC on the Horizon Web Blog – The Mystery Behind SDHC. But in a nutshell, unless your camera, mobile phone, sat-nav or PDA specifically says that it supports SDHC cards, it more than likely does not.

So although those new 4GB, 8GB and even 16GB and 32GB SD cards may seem like an excellent way of perhaps recording more video or taking thousands of photographs, rather than just hundreds, unfortunately for most people, particulary those with devices a year or two old, it just isn’t possible.

If you’re in any doubt as to whether your device is SDHC compatible, feel free to contact us at Horizon Flash Memory, or even comment here with the make and model of your device and we’d be happy to let you know.

Conflicting Advice

Nintendo Wii owners, like most people it seems, have difficulty finding out whether their device is SDHC compatible and then which cards to purchase. A simple search for ‘Nintendo Wii compatible SD cards‘, turns up all sorts of conflicting advice.

Even the Nintendo Wii website itself makes no mention of SDHC cards, simply stating that the Wii is only compatible with SD cards of 2GB or less.

At Horizon Flash Memory, we can give simple clear advice on this issue, SDHC cards are not compatible with the Nintendo Wii, no cards more than 2GB in capacity will work. Needless to say all of our SD cards of 2GB or less are 100% compatible with the Nintendo Wii – and this is guaranteed.

Cheap As Chips

There is an upside however to not being able to use the newer, higher capacity SD cards. As the capacities get higher and higher the prices at the bottom end of the capacity scale get cheaper and cheaper.

If you shop around you can find lower capacity SD cards at unbelievably low prices. Strangely, there are also places that sell 512MB SD cards for between £8-£10 each! So as always it is important to shop around to get the best deals.

And while our 1GB and 2GB SD cards are not quite as cheap as chips, at £2.99 and £4.49 respectively, they are both cheaper than cod and chips, and offer fantastic value.

Technorati Tags: Horizon Flash Memory, Nintendo, Wii, Nintendo Wii, SD cards, SDHC, Secure Digital Cards, microSD, Flash Memory, Memory Cards, Xbox