Submitted by: kirkland on Friday February 27th, 2004 at 02:27 PM EST

Memory card maker SanDisk and cell phone manufacturer Motorola have teamed up on a new small flash card aimed at handsets as the two companies look to capitalize on the trend toward the miniaturization of memory cards.

SanDisk formally announced the new format, called T-Flash, late Thursday. The new cards will allow portable devices to store data, such as digital images and audio. SanDisk expects the cards to be readily available in the second quarter, and Motorola intends to use them in new cell phones due out in the second half of the year.

The T-Flash cards will be about half the size of a cell phones' subscriber identity module (SIM) cards, or about the size of a fingernail, according to Sunnyvale, Calif.-based SanDisk. They will store 32MB to 128MB of memory and cost $14 to $39, the company said.

Several new formats have been introduced over the last two years and have consistently been smaller than previous formats to address the needs of the shrinking devices.

More and more of these small cards are targeting the high-volume cell phone market. Cell phones have been advancing to include features such as integrated cameras and messaging capabilities, which require local storage. At the same time, they've been getting smaller to appeal to consumers who rate portability high among their priorities.

T-Flash cards can be fitted into an SD adapter and used in devices with an SD slot. T-Flash uses NAND flash memory, which is typically used in MP3 players and portable flash cards like Sony's Memory Stick. Shipments of products using NAND more than doubled in 2003, lifting the fortunes of NAND manufacturers like Samsung and Toshiba.

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