New IEEE P2200 Draft Standard Aims to Deliver High Quality Mobile Experience (HQME) to Consumers Worldwide

BARCELONA, Spain--([ BUSINESS WIRE ])--Mobile World Congressa"The HQME Steering Committee, a newly formed group of mobile and content industry leaders that includes SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), SoftBank Mobile, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Orange, today announced a proposed industry standard aimed at addressing the current and growing challenges of efficiently managing and delivering data from mobile networks to mobile devices.

"This is about anticipating our customersa� needs and serving them exactly what they want, when they want it"

HQME (High Quality Mobile Experience) is a proposed industry standard that leverages local storage and intelligent content caching to relieve network congestion and accelerate data delivery to the mobile device. HQME aims to create a more enjoyable mobile multimedia experience by more efficiently delivering bandwidth-intensive content and allowing users to consume it while bypassing common data delivery pitfalls and reducing negative impact to the overall network.

An Industry-Wide Problem

Consumer demand for mobile content is set to outpace spending and innovation in network capacity for years to come. The resulting bandwidth constraint impacts usersa� mobile experience, causing them to stare at loading animations as a video prepares to play, and then again throughout playback as the video pauses to re-buffer. The suboptimal user experience is expected to worsen as mobile devices proliferate and consumers, with a growing expectation to consume bandwidth-intensive data on their mobile devices, increase their demand for more content.

According to Cisco, overall mobile data traffic is expected to grow to 6.3exabytes per month by 2015, a 26-fold increase over 2010, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 92 percent from 2010 to 2015.¹

aThis issue affects all members of the mobile ecosystem, including content owners, network operators, device manufacturers, memory providers and app developers,a said Flint Pulskamp, research director, wireless and wired communications semiconductors, IDC. aThe proposed solution requires an industry-wide approach so that it is both effective and sustainable.a

The Proposed Solution

Under the proposed IEEE P2200 standard, memory on the mobile device is viewed as the alast node on the network.a� This calls for compliant applications to download content when the mobile device is connected to AC power and Wi-Fi instead of during peak hours the next day. Preemptively downloading content to the devicea�s local storage allows consumers to access the content they want while circumventing the bottlenecks associated with mobile network congestion during peak hours.

"HQME's innovation is to align key players in mobile content delivery to minimize the inconveniences associated with acquiring content over capacity-constrained mobile networks," said Susan Kevorkian, research director, mobile connected devices, IDC. "Intelligently coordinating content delivery in advance to local device storage lets consumers enjoy their video, games, periodicals, books and music when they're ready, and may help mobile operators and service providers to reduce churn by improving the perceived quality of the experience. The importance of this type of industry-standard solution will only grow as adoption of mobile broadband enabled devices proliferates in tandem with mobile entertainment services."

aSolving the problem takes an industry-wide effort, and thata�s the purpose behind the HQME steering committee,a said Robert Khedouri, vice president and general manager, software and solutions, SanDisk. aThe HQME initiative and end result will take some time, but progress has already been made by putting our collective heads together to propose a standardized solution aimed at increasing customer satisfaction.a

HQME Steering Committee Formed

The IEEE working group P2200, which currently includes SanDisk, SoftBank Mobile, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Orange, will drive the development of the HQME standard. The steering committee is responsible for the coordination of the standards body and the development of business models that implement the standard. Details of the IEEE draft specification P2200 can be found at [ http://standards.ieee.org/develop/project/2200.html ].

aIn an increasingly mobile and connected world, ita�s critical that we work together across industries to find the solutions that will give consumers the quality, reliability and choice they deserve,a said Mitch Singer, CTO of Sony Pictures Entertainment and president of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem.

aThe adoptionof mobile multimedia willmassively grow in the coming years, and weneed to provide our customers with the bestuser experience,a said Guillaume de Riberolles, vice president, mobile multimedia, Orange.

aThis is about anticipating our customersa� needs and serving them exactly what they want, when they want it,a said SanDiska�s Khedouri. aWant to watch that new episode of your favorite TV show? Ita�s already there. In fact, ita�s in higher quality. Thata�s what we are striving for in this initiativea"a high quality mobile experience.a

In addition to its steering committee, HQME has the support of other existing coalitions and key standards bodies, including the [ World Wide Web Consortium ] (W3C) and the [ Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem ] (DECE) LLC. Steering committee members will be participating at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 14-18. For more information, visit [ hqme.org. ]

About SanDisk

SanDisk Corporation is the global leader in flash memory cards a" from research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and retail distribution. SanDiska�s product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state drives for computers. [ SanDisk ] is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half its sales outside the United States.

¹ Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update. 2010-2015. [ http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-520862.html ]

SanDiska�s product and executive images can be downloaded from
[ http://www.sandisk.com/corporate/media.asp ]
SanDiska�s web site/home page address: [ http://www.sandisk.com ]

� 2011 SanDisk Corporation. All rights reserved. SanDisk and the SanDisk logo are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. The HQME logo is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder (s).

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including expectations for standards, applications, features, markets, and customers that are based on our current expectations and involve numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate include among others: the proposed standards may not be adopted by the market, the market demand for our products may grow more slowly than our expectations or our products may not perform as expected and the other risks detailed from time-to-time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q. We do not intend to update the information contained in this press release.

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New IEEE P2200 Draft Standard Aims to Deliver High Quality Mobile Experience (HQME) to Consumers Worldwide