So far, pocket-size devices that hold more than a gigabyte of data have cost several hundred dollars, making them out of reach for most consumers. The 1.5-gigabyte drive is the work of a start-up called Cornice in Colorado.

Cornice Storage Elements sell for $65 each when a customer commits to buying more than 100,000 a year, the company hopes to get the price down to $50 soon. They are manufactured in China by TDK subsidiary Stanford Applied Engineering. The company is confident that those prices should allow partners to comfortably sell $200 MP3 players and $150 USB storage drives that include the technology.

Cornice says its customer commitments include Thomson for its RCA Lyra Micro player, Rio for its Nitrus and Eigen MP3 players, and Samsung for its ``digital gadget'', a unit the size of a deck of cards that will snap pictures, store and play back video. A South Korean company plans to build the drive into a USB storage device that will cost less than $150.

``It is sort of a trend in hard drives,'' said Thomson spokesman Dave Arland. ``It's not just the bigger drive, it's the more compact size.''

Cornice announced last week that it had raised $22 million in venture funding as of August 2002. Funding came from CIBC Capital Partners, Nokia Venture Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners. Texas Instruments was an early investor.

Magenis said he expects Cornice will be able to increase its drive capacity by 60 percent a year, about the same rate as PC hard drives. At that rate, the drive will be able to hold as much high-quality video as a DVD in 2 1/2 years.

By: DocMemory
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