Samsung unveiled the world's first Universal Flash Store (UFS) lineup of microSD cards about a month ago. UFS is the next-generation memory standard for mobile devices and Samsung is aiming to be a leader in this sector. The company talked about its future strategy for UFS at the Mobile & IoT Forum 2016 in Seoul. Senior research fellow at Samsung's memory division Cho Hee-chang said that “As King Arthur subjugated the whole nation with the magical sword Excalibur, the Excalibur of a future mobile world will be none other than UFS.” What an interesting analogy.
Cho predicted that the use of UFS memory will expand in the coming years as OEMs switch to this high-capacity and low-power consumption storage solution. High-capacity storage is essential in gadgets like 4K and 8K cameras and UFS will also prove to be very useful in the production of VR content and in automobiles where camera sensors are increasingly playing an important part.
Another researcher from Samsung's memory business, Kim Do-kyun, forecasted that the external UFS card v1.0 that is capable of transfers of 600MB per second will be upgraded to v2.0 by the first half of 2018. It will be capable of transferring 1.2GB per second. Internal UFS 2.0 and 2.1 which transfer data at 1.2GB per second are expected to jump to 2.4GB per second in version 3.0 also by the first half of 2018. Both Samsung presenters at the forum said that the company will steadily lead the UFS market in the years to come.
