If the headline sounds bitter, it’s because we are. For longer than we care to remember, Sony (and its mobile phone manufacturing joint venture, Sony Ericsson) has been pushing their proprietary Memory Stick format on the world – only to find that their arm-twisting tactics did little more than frustrate and annoy the mass market. Thankfully, it looks like struggling Sony Ericsson isn’t going to let the mis-managed memory format drag down its bottom line anymore. Sony Ericsson has confirmed that they’ll be ditching the Memory Stick Micro (M2) format in favor of microSD card slots in all its future handset.
The news isn’t all that surprising, given Sony Ericsson’s new Yari, Aino and Satio handsets feature a microSD card slot in place of the Memory Stick Micro slot that has plagued past Sony Ericsson phones. And, we’re expecting future Sony Ericsson phones to use the microSD format as well. In fact, Sony Ericsson will be shifting their entire handset lineup away from MemoryStick, opting instead to use the more widely-adopted (compared to the Sony-only MemoryStick format) microSD format in future phones.
Now, if only Sony would wise up and put Memory Stick out to pasture. Would anyone miss Memory Stick?
[Update]
Sony Ericsson confirmed that “microSD will be a part of SE’s strategy going forward. We cannot comment to what extend that role will be.” And, SE also confirmed that microSD would completely replace MemoryStick Micro in “some SE phone lines, but both formats will continue to be important to SE’s strategy.”
It looks like M2 isn’t quite yet dead.
[Via: TrustedReviews]