SD Association Holds Third Industry Meeting; Membership Increases to 82 Industry Leading Firms; Canon, Palm and Philips Named to Board

Business Wire, July 12, 2000

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BURLINGAME, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 12, 2000

The SD Association (SDA) continued to build significant industry momentum as it concluded its third open standards meeting of the year. Attendees at the meeting numbered 180, drawing from a membership base which has now climbed to 82 industry leading firms. The SDA's management team was also significantly strengthened with the acceptance of Canon, Palm Inc. and Philips Electronics to the SDA's board of directors. The SDA is an open industry standards organization established in January 2000. Its mission is to set industry standards for the SD (Secure Digital) Card and promote its wide acceptance in a variety of applications.

SDA president Ray Creech said, "Our third meeting, which was recently held in the San Francisco Bay Area, serves as a strong indicator of the industry support we have achieved in a very short time span. This support is evidenced by our growing membership base, strong board of directors representation and significant progress in applications development. Milestones achieved during our third meeting clearly indicate that we are on track in our efforts to make SD card "the" de-facto secure data storage and I/O media for a wide range of digital devices by the end of this year."

In the SDA's second meeting held in April 2000, three work groups were formed to establish reference specifications to ensure application interoperability in: I/O (Bluetooth and LAN), Visual (Motion and Still pictures) and Audio (Kiosk support). These work groups have now published, within the SDA, their draft specifications for revision 1.0 release which will be approved by the executive membership at the October 2000 meeting. In addition to these work groups, two new work groups were formed at the recent meeting in the areas of: Sound (MIDI) Voice (Personal Audio) and Documents (Printing and Fax). These new groups are targeting to release these specifications by Spring 2001.

Overseeing all of this activity is the SDA board, which now numbers 18 directors, representing a wide range of consumer electronics, telecommunications and information technology companies (a board of directors list is attached).

"Among the newest members to the SDA board of directors, Palm Inc. is not only active at the board level, they're also working to broaden acceptance of the standard through active participation in the work groups -- particularly in the area of I/O and Bluetooth development. We are extremely pleased to have their leadership and participation within the organization," stated Creech.

"Palm Inc. is committed to helping the SDA drive widespread industry acceptance of the SD Card in the shortest possible time -- both in terms of a storage medium and as a communications medium," said Byron Connell, Vice President, Consumer Markets Group at Palm. "We believe that the SD standard offers tremendous value to enterprises as well as individual handheld users, which is why we announced our commitment to support the standard in both the Palm OS(R) platform as well as our own branded products. Part of the value proposition we see is the inter-operability between handhelds, smartphones and other devices. We are committed to working with the SDA membership to provide an abundance of solutions using SD-equipped hardware and media."

Earlier this year, SDA board of directors member Matsushita and a major Japanese telecommunications concern formed a joint venture company -- AirMedia -- which is now conducting field trials using SD Memory Cards for the secure downloading of music content to PHS cellular phones in Japan.

"The SD Association views activities such as the ongoing trials in Japan and Palm's endorsement for future handheld devices as a clear indication of the momentum the SD Card standard has in the telecommunications and information technology industries," said Wes Brewer, SDA marketing committee chairman and director of marketing strategies at SanDisk Corp.

The SD Card standard is being built into a wide range of new digital products such as audio players, cellular phones, automotive telematics systems, handheld PCs and video cameras. The association's new web site at www.sdcard.org is now online and contains more information about SDA membership, applications usage, member companies and upcoming meetings.

Parties interested in joining the SDA are encouraged to visit the website or contact Ray Creech directly at 831/623-2107. Email is rcreech@sdcard.org

Note to Editors: Palm OS is a registered trademark and Palm is a trademark of Palm, Inc. or its subsidiaries.

SDA Board of Directors List -- alphabetical by company

1.   Mr. Hitoshi Kajiwara            Alpine Electronics
2.   Mr. Kenji Nakamura              Canon Incorporated
3.   Mr. Ken Nicholas                Compaq Computer Corporation
4.   Mr. Ken Eldredge                Hewlett-Packard
5.   Mr. Tom Berarducci              Eastman Kodak
6.   Mr. Myeong-Joon Kang            LG Electronics Incorporated
7.   Mr. Sakon Nagasaki              Matsushita Electric Industrial
8.   Mr. Junichi Kondo               Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
9.   Mr. Rob Bero                    Motorola Incorporated
10.  Mr. Masaaki Ohara               NEC Corporation
11.  Mr. Frank Canova                Palm Incorporated
12.  Mr. Jean-Marc Matteini          Philips Consumer Electronics
13.  Mr. Yoon Soo Kim                Samsung
14.  Mr. Yoram Cedar                 SanDisk Corporation
15.  Mr. Ray Creech                  Ex-officio (SDA President)
16.  Mr. Yoshio Okano                Sharp Corporation
17.  Mr. Yves Blanc                  Thomson Consumer Electronics
18.  Mr. Koji Hase                   Toshiba