May 1, 2000

Would-be king
INNOVATION: Tiny media aims to unseat flash

But flash has an Achilles heel: It can't compare with magnetic and optical media in terms of cost per megabyte. As consumers seek cheap, miniature storage for their digital assets, flash will face coup attempts.

The first challenger—a startup called DataPlay—says its Quarter-sized, plastic-encased discs will cost less than $10 when shipments start in early 2001. DataPlay hasn't fully revealed how the technology works, but says host products will integrate a micro-optical "engine" (marketing-speak for "drive").

With capacity of 256 Mbytes/side, users will have to flip the discs to achieve the touted half-gigabyte capacity. Still, 64-Mbyte flash modules cost $75 or more, so DataPlay could easily claim the price/capacity advantage.

However, DataPlay discs will be write-once animals. The company says consumers will buy blank discs for storage, while content providers will use the discs to distribute prerecorded data. To that end, DataPlay trumpets Content Key, an e-commerce feature that lets publishers record and protect multiple titles on a single disc. Via the Internet, consumers would selectively pay for and decrypt the content.

To date, specific shortcomings have prevented optical and magnetic technologies from mounting a serious challenge to flash. For example, Iomega's magnetic Clik! discs have questionable reliability and store only 40 Mbytes. Nevertheless, ideas keep surfacing. At last fall's Comdex, Sanyo, Olympus, and Maxell floated a concept for a 730-Mbyte, 50-mm-diameter magneto-optical disc.

DataPlay could find success if the company delivers on its promises. However, the startup also wouldn't be the first to fail in this arena. About two years ago, a company called Ioptics announced a 128-Mbyte optical read-only technology, which is nowhere to be found today.

In addition to making its discs cheap, DataPlay must squeeze cost out of its micro-optical drive—designers won't adopt it if it raises their product's retail price. Initial reports say the drive might cost up to $100. By contrast, adding a CompactFlash slot to a design costs virtually nothing.