Roughly two years ago, there was a time when new memory card formats were popping up every few weeks. Since that time, the situation has stabilized, with the majority of smartphone makers using some version of the SD standard. But some companies aren't happy, and have come together to develop a new memory card format. This group includes some heavy hitters in the smartphone market: Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology, and others

The new standard is actually being put together under the aegis of the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, a leading open-standards organization in the semiconductor industry.

The goal of the new specification, dubbed Universal Flash Storage (UFS), is memory cards with high-speed access to large multimedia files, while at the same time reducing power-consumption. The target performance level is a significant advancement beyond that of the varied flash cards popular today. Under the new standard, a 90-minute movie that that takes up 4 GB on a memory card will be loaded in seconds.

UFS is planned to provide consumers with a unified removable memory card that can be shared among various mobile, portable, and other consumer electronic devices without the need for adapters.

The UFS standard is expected to be finalized in 2009.