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Pioneer Corporation and Sharp Corporation today signed a formal contract for the establishment of an optical disk joint venture.

The goal of the new joint venture is to make more effective use of the management resources of the two companies in the optical disk business field, and to further expand the business in this area, especially in the highly promising Blu-ray Disc market. The new company will develop, design, manufacture and sell optical-disk products such as optical disk drives, recorders and players.

Pioneer and Sharp plan to launch operations at the joint venture on October 1, 2009.

SanDisk Corporation, the global leader in flash memory cards, today introduced the fastest 32-gigabyte (GB) SDHC™ card on the market. The 32GB SanDisk Extreme® SDHC™ card at up to 30 megabytes per second (MB/s) read and write speeds combines industry-leading performance with massive storage capacity, helping digital photography enthusiasts utilize the advanced features of today’s DSLR cameras.

“The market for entry to mid-level DSLR cameras is growing, and SDHC is becoming the de-facto card format for these devices,” said Susan Park, director, retail product marketing, SanDisk. “Our card’s 32GB of storage and up to 30MB/s read & write speeds enable DSLR users to shoot without worrying about storage or speed limitations. SanDisk Extreme SDHC cards provide consumers with a more enjoyable user experience, letting them focus on what is really important – the images that they are capturing.”

Active Media Products, manufacturer of unique USB drives including the Obama drive, today introduced the new Predator GT series of 2.5-inch Serial ATA solid state drives that support outrageously fast data transfer speeds and include a Flex-fit adapter bracket to facilitate mounting in 3.5-inch drive bays.

The Predator GT is immediately available through Amazon and other online resellers in 64GB and 128GB capacities. Predator GT SSDs are based on a new 8-channel controller and employ a beefy 128MB SDRAM cache to reach blistering fast speeds. The 128GB model supports sequential write speeds up to 200MB/sec while the 64GB drive supports sequential write speeds up to 120MB/sec. Both models are capable of sequential read speeds up to 220MB/sec and 0.1ms access times.

The Predator GT is encased in a brushed aluminum housing that is physically compatible with 2.5-inch hard drives, making laptop upgrades a breeze. Both models include a Flex-fit 3.5-inch bracket and mounting screws for installing the drives in a standard 3.5-inch desktop drive bay.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it is now sampling a SATA-interface mini-card solid state drive (SSD) with some of its customers, for use in the expanding netbook marketplace. The Samsung SATA mini-card SSD expands the use of SSDs from not only being a primary storage medium, but also as a complementary drive to boost the performance of PCs with dual drive capabilities.

Samsung’s new mini-card form factor, with a highly robust interface, makes an already rugged SSD even less susceptible to damage from jarring, jostling and dropping.

“The market is beginning to embrace a smaller SSD for the nascent netbook sector,” said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. “The cost-efficiency and reliability of lower-density, highly compact Samsung SSDs are perfectly suited as the storage medium for the rapidly growing netbook marketplace,” he added.