Phillips Portable-Blue 3cm sized disk holds one GigaByte of data

September 2, 2003

Philips has developed a re-writable optical disk-based, Portable Blue standard and it is something to behold. Already able to hold 1000 megs, they claim the ability to increase the storage capacity to "several gigabytes" with a dual layer disk, already in development. Will it undermine the solid-state rivals such as Secure Digital, Compact Flash and Memory Stick? A PC card housing for the Portable Blue disks has also been developed and Philips intends to use a storage housing that will fit into existing Compact Flash slots. So they have their sites set on the solid state market.

Optical storage is relatively cheap to produce but has been slow in matching the level of miniaturisation of solid-state. A co-developer of the CD with Sony, Philips has been largely absent from the solid-state memory battle, but has been quietly working away on Portable Blue, developing a 3cm rewritable disk the size of a 20c coin but capable of holding 1GB (gigabyte) of data.The Portable Blue drive includes a tiny optical reading arm in a housing 5mm thick, an extension of Philips Blu-Ray technology.

Philips estimates Portable Blue will yield 10 to 100 times lower cost per MB than solid-state memory. Sony expects to have 200 million Memory Stick-enabled devices sold by 2005 as it battles Matsushita and others for the upper hand in the lucrative storage market.

Meanwhile, Philips has licensed the Memory Stick technology from Sony for use in its Nexperia range of products such as digital TV sets, LCD screens and mobile phones, which incorporate programmable silicon on micro-chips.

It has also cross-licensed the Portable Blue technology to Sony.

A Philips Research spokesman said mp3 music files could be played in real time from the disks, which are single-sided. While cheap to make, they have higher power requirements than their solid-state alternatives, an issue particularly important to battery-powered portable devices.

Source: nzherald.co.nz