SanDisk's MultiMediaCard for Removable Storage Supported by Symbian Joint Venture

Business Wire, July 28, 1998

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 28, 1998--

SanDisk's MultiMediaCard Gains Massive Industry Support as Industry Standard Removable Storage for Mobile Devices

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) announced today that the MultiMediaCard (MMC), a small, removable memory card for mobile devices, has received major endorsement as an industry standard with the formation of Symbian, a joint venture started by Ericsson, Nokia and Psion.

Support for the MMC is built into EPOC, the operating system Symbian will promote for smartphones and other wireless information devices.

Symbian, which was formed June 24th, also is supported by Motorola which signed an agreement to join the new entity.

Philips already relies on the EPOC operating system for its new smartphone. With these and other major manufacturers such as Ericsson, Nokia and Psion developing EPOC based wireless information devices, SanDisk believes that EPOC and the MMC will be used widely in numerous new mobile phones including combination phone-computer products.

EPOC, which was developed by Psion, already has gained enormous worldwide support. In mobile devices, such as smartphones and communicators using this operating system, MMC is an easy-to-use, plug-and-play storage card.

PsiWin Software, an easy-to-use converter, backup and synchronization program, is available with products using EPOC and via the Internet. PsiWin is designed for full compatibility with Windows(R) platforms.

The MMC was introduced by SanDisk and Siemens AG in November, 1997. Weighing less than two grams and the size of a postage stamp, the MMC was designed to provide a storage solution for the mobile telecommunications market.

Supported by the world's largest telecommunications companies, MMC is emerging as the portable storage standard for mobile phones, pagers and other handheld products. With MMC, smartphones and communicators have the ability to store faxes, e-mail messages, databases and voice.

Nelson Chan, SanDisk's vice president of marketing, said, "This joint venture is great news for MMC. Just as these market leaders chose SanDisk's MMC as the removable storage standard for mobile devices, they are standardizing on an operating system which supports and relies on MMC as the removable storage card for data, image and audio.

v "MMC is the ideal storage solution for platforms, such as EPOC, which go beyond simple communication tasks and includes capabilities of a fully loaded mobile office."

Juha Christensen, vice president of licensing at Symbian, said, "From an operating system standpoint, MMC is the ideal storage medium. Since MMC is removable, there is no memory restriction as these mobile devices begin to shrink in size. The EPOC operating system supports multiple PC tasks which will depend on expandable storage such as MMC."

SanDisk Corporation, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is based in Sunnyvale, CA.

The matters discussed in this news release contain forward looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties as described under the caption "Risk Factors" in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update the information in this release.

Note to editors: All trade names are either registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders. Symbian's web site/home page address: http://www.symbian.com. SanDisk's web site/home page address: http://www.sandisk.com.

    CONTACT: SanDisk Corporation
              Brandon Talaich, 408/542-0624
              btalaich@sandisk.com
              or
              Symbian
              Paul Cockerton  44-171-208-1800
              paul.cockerton@symbian.com