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PDAs and smartphones may run on a number of different platforms, including Windows Mobile, the Palm OS, Symbian and Linux among others, but they all pretty much share one thing in common now a days, the ability to expand capacity and add content via a memory card. A few card vendors, IBM, San Disk, and Simple Tech, recently made recently announcements that should bring a smile to handheld users faces, while burning a hole in their pockets.

6 GB CompactFlash Card
At the annual Photo Marketing Association show in Las Vegas last week, SimpleTech announced the first 8 GB CompactFlash card. This memory card features a controller that writes data at a speedy 10 MB/sec and has a price tag, $6,000, to match its huge size. This is ten times the cost of most high-end PDAs and smartphones. A card of this size and price is aimed at professional photographers, as it is out of the price range of most mobile device users.

Memory card prices drop fairly quickly, however, as new capacity highs are always being reached. SimpleTech expects to start producing these cards in the second quarter. It'll come with a lifetime warranty.

SandDisk Storage High's & Low-Costs
SandDisk also made some announcements at the Photo Marketing show. SanDisk's products fall more in line with what handheld users might be willing to spend on memory cards. First up, the company plans to launch a line of low-cost CompactFlash and SD cards called the Shoot & Store line. The first products in this line include 32 MB Secure Digital and CompactFlash cards for $14.99, available at your local pharmacy or grocery store, with 64 MB memory cards to appear later in the year for $24.99. SandDisk also plans to add other types of expansion memory, including Memory Stick Pro, to the Shoot & Store line in the future.

At the other end of the spectrum is SanDisk's recently announced 4 GB CompactFlash card, which is slated to be available in April for $1000. Five grand cheaper than the proposed 6 GB card from SimpleTech. A switch on the card will let users choose between two 2GB volumes or a single 4GB volume. Unlike Lexar's announced Type II CompactFlash card in this capacity, SanDisk said its 4 GB card will be Type I, which will allow it to work with all CompactFlash slots.

In related news, last month SanDisk started shipping a 1 GB Secure Digital card, doubling the previous storage high for SD cards from 512 MB. The price of the new Secure Digital card is $500.

4 GB IBM MicroDrive
IBM, which helped launch mini hard drives in the CompactFlash format, plans to start selling a 4 GB MicroDrive. This drive is four times IBM's previous high of 1 GB. Hitachi announed its version of the 4 GB MicroDrive last year.

Unlike other types of CompactFlash media, a MicroDrive includes an actual hard rive to store data rather flash memory. This makes the media slower, but a lot cheaper. For instance, the new 4 GB MicroDrive costs $499, half the price of SanDisk's new 4 GB CompactFlash card.

Back in December, the NPD Group released a report showing that Secure Digital passed the CompactFlash format to take the top position in market share among memory cards with 30% of the U.S. flash memory market against 28.8% for CompactFlash . In third place was Memory Stick, with a 22% market share.