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SandDisk announced a major breakthrough for miniSD flash memory at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France today. The company has doubled the maximum storage capacity of the fledgling format from 512 megabytes (MB) to 1 gigabyte (GB), overcoming a potential barrier to its acceptance among consumers.

Compared to Secure Digital (SD), which go as high as 2 GB in capacity and is the most popular flash memory format, miniSD saves more than 40 percent of the printed circuit board area and 60 percent of the volume required to support a card in a portable device. It is also half the size of the already postage-stamp-sized SD card

These are huge pluses for handheld, smartphone, and mobile phone manufacturers who want to add a memory slot to ever-smaller mobile devices. IDC reports the global market for mobile phones with card slots is expected to increase to more than 258 million units by next year.

SanDisk consumer & handset executive VP Nelson Chan said a 1 GB miniSD card lets you "store approximately 16 hours of MP3 songs, record up to several hours of MPEG-4 video, or take more than 2000 digital photos on a 1-megapixel mobile phone."

In addition to Sendo's X2 Music Phone, also announced at 3GSM this week, a number of other smartphones integrate miniSD slots. These include the Motorola MPx220, Orange SPV C500, Panasonic X700, Fujitsu F900iT, and Hewlett-Packard's upcoming iPAQ Mobile Messenger (the hw6500 series), among others.

SanDisk plans to release the 1 GB miniSD card in the second quarter for about $100 with an adapter for full-sized SD card slots. A 512 MB card currently goes for about $70, while 64 MB to 256 MB models range in price from $22 to $50.