 thumb|300px|sandisk hc memory card 32 gb with adapter a memory card or flash card is an electronic flash memory data storage device used for storing digital information. these are commonly used in many electronic devices, including digital cameras, mobile phones, laptop computers, mp3 players and video game consoles, tablets. most of these can be diminutive, re-recordable, and can retain data without power. ==history== pc cards (pcmcia) were among first commercial memory card formats (type i cards) to come out in the 1990s, but are now mainly used in industrial applications and to connect i/o devices such as modems. in the 1990s, a number of memory card formats smaller than the pc card arrived, including compactflash, smartmedia, and miniature card. the desire for smaller cards for cell-phones, pdas, and compact digital cameras drove a trend that left the previous generation of "compact" cards looking big. in digital cameras smartmedia and compactflash had been very successful. in 2001, sm alone captured 50% of the digital camera market and cf had captured the professional digital camera market. by 2005 however, sd/mmc had nearly taken over smartmedia's spot, though not to the same level and with stiff competition coming from memory stick variants, as well as compactflash. in industrial and embedded fields, even the venerable pc card (pcmcia) memory cards still manage to maintain a niche, while in mobile phones and pdas, the memory card market was highly fragmented until 2010 when micro-sd came to dominate new high-end phones and tablet computers. since 2010, new products of sony (previously only using memory stick) and olympus (previously only using xd-card) have been offered with an additional sd-card slot. effectively the format war has turned in sd-card's favor."format-krieg entschieden: sd-card setzt sich durch" ("format-war resolved: sd-card prevails"), chip-online, 14. january 2010"camera trends come into focus for 2010", msnbc, 13. january.2010 "as much as the storage-format war cleared up a bit with sony announcing that it would support sd and sdhc cards ..."[http://www.marketnews.ca/latestnewsheadlines/feature:playingyourcardsrighta
Solid-state_computer_storage_media Video_game_storage_media