SanDisk launches memory card to expand usage of carrier services

Cell phone carriers need all the help they can get, given the pressure on profits in the tough economy. And they’re about to get some help from a surprising partner.

SanDisk is launching a new flash memory chip card today that will make it easy for cell phone carriers to add new services to existing phones or to direct users more easily to services the carriers want to push. It’s announcing the new card at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The SanDisk Service Delivery Card has 16 gigabytes of data, enough to store a variety of applications a carrier might want to offer its customers, said Elliot Broadwin, a vice president at the San Jose, Calif.-based company. It will also have the software that consumers need to get to the right mobile web sites if they want to buy services such as video, music or game downloads.

Consumers can take the small card, put it in the memory card slot (which comes in 70 percent of phones now), and the software on the card can automatically trigger the phone to go to a mobile web site. That will increase traffic to the mobile operator’s portal, improve brand recognition, and let consumers discover new services. This means that even cell phones that aren’t smartphone can now have some of the features of those smart phones, as provided by the Service Delivery Card.

The card will also drive consumers to use services that would otherwise go unnoticed. Broadwin also said that it will democratize cell phones by allowing most of a carriers customers to access the same services regardless of how new or old a particular user’s phone is.

SanDisk is leaving it up to the carriers to dream up services. The carriers could preload applications such as games or wallpapers on the cards and would be able to offer a more customized service to each customer. Products with the cards are expected to hit the market this year.

This is actually a clever scheme, coming from a company that is slugging it out in the commodity flash memory market and, as a result, lost $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter. It’s the kind of thing that will help SanDisk survive as an independent company and fend off hostitle takeover attempts from the likes of rival, Samsung. (Samsung dropped its bid).

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