Speaking to TrustedReviews, Sony Ericsson Global Marketing Director Fortuné Alexander has confirmed that Sony Ericsson will henceforth be adopting the microSD standard across its forthcoming handset lineup and will be abandoning Sony’s MemoryStick format, stating “Yes, we are moving in that direction”.
Such a move is not without precedent as the Sony Ericsson K850i featured a MemoryStick/microSD combo slot, and Japanese Sony Ericsson handsets were previously the only models to feature SD, miniSD, and later microSD expansion slots as a result of Japanese carrier requirements.
Sony’s MemoryStick format was developed by the corporation in order for it to compete with several other standards of its era including the Nokia backed MultiMedia Card, Panasonic’s Secure Digital, and CompactFlash.
The format gave birth to a myriad of further derivatives in Memory Stick Select, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick PRO Duo, Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo and Memory Stick Micro, which were at once part of the same family and lacked interoperatibility, with different devices and handsets supporting different cards with different standards.