Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. and Olympus Corp. have jointly developed a 1GB version of their XD Picture Card memory card and plan to put it on sale in the first half of next year, they said Monday.
The two companies did not announce any other details of the card beyond its planned launch during the first half of 2005. Pricing was not announced and a FujiFilm spokeswoman declined to provide any estimate for how much it will cost.
The current largest capacity XD Picture Card is a 512MB model that was introduced in June 2003. It sells for as cheaply as ¥15,000 (US$136) in Japan, according to comparison shopping site Kakaku.com, and as low as $147 in the U.S., according to PCWorld.com’s Product Finder.
The two companies introduced the XD Picture Card format in 2002 as the format they had previously favored, SmartMedia, was reaching the end of its life. To date the format has seen little additional use beyond the two companies as most digital camera makers are using SD (Secure Digital), MMC (Multimedia Card) or Compact Flash (CF) in their products.