SanDisk Corp. plans to announce tomorrow that it has started shipping what it claims is the world's highest-capacity removable memory card for mobile phones - the 32GB SanDisk microSDHC.

The new microSDHC card targets the smartphone market and uses third-generation 32nm lithography techniques with 3-bit-per-cell NAND flash technology.

Most manufactures of NAND flash products use 2-bit-per-cell multi-level cell (MLC) memory.

"With the large volume of photos, videos and music that consumers create and carry around, a high-capacity memory card is a must-have component of today's smartphone," said Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk's president, in a statement. "This is the highest-capacity card of its type, and SanDisk is pleased to be the first to ship such an advanced product. This marks yet another important first in our innovative history in the flash memory industry."

SanDisk said 32GB cards are already needed by many users as smartphones increasingly serve as mobile offices, and incorporate music players, cameras, video recorders, GPS devices and gateways to the mobile Internet. The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card, SanDisk noted, can store enough music to play music on more than 35 round-trip flights between San Francisco and New York before repeating a single song.

SanDisk microSDHC cards are also available in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities.

The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card is available now on SanDisk.com as well as on U.S. and European e-commerce. Worldwide retail availability is expected to follow next month.

The new card comes with a 5 year limited warranty and has a retail price of $199.99.

SanDisk's 32GB microSDHD card.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian, or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.