In a bid to compete against Sony Corp.'s Memory Stick, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. will introduce a product in June featuring a small flash memory card named the SD Memory Card, Matsushita announced Tuesday.

Matsushita plans to launch a series of products compatible with the SD Memory Card in the future, ranging from computers to cellular phones and home electronics appliances.

As its first SD Memory Card-based product, Matsushita will launch the SV-SD70 compact audio player onto the Japanese market on June 30.

The portable audio player is 4.6 cm wide, 4.8 cm high and 1.5 cm thick. It weighs about 55 grams, including a battery.

Users must copy compact discs or download music from the Internet onto their personal computers and transfer it to the SD Memory Card in order to use it.

Matsushita will also launch SV-SD01, a head-phone style audio player compatible with the SD Memory Card, on July 10. The company also plans to introduce desktop personal computers compatible with the memory card this summer.

Both types of audio players are priced at 49,800 yen and Matsushita hopes to sell 3,000 units of each type per month.

The SD Memory Card's competition is Sony's Memory Stick flash memory card, launched in 1999, which is the size of a stick of chewing gum. Memory Stick-based products include portable audio players and digital cameras.

Matsushita is encouraging companies to support the SD Memory Card and to develop products compatible with it in an effort to dominate the market. Sony is attempting the same with its Memory Stick system.

PC shipments increase

Domestic shipments of personal computers hit a record-high 9.941 million units in fiscal 1999, up 32 percent from the year before, the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association said Tuesday.

In value terms, shipments by Japanese and foreign computer makers in Japan also hit a record-high 1.974 trillion yen, up 21 percent, the 102-member industry group said.

The association predicted that shipments in fiscal 2000, which began in April, will increase 16 percent from fiscal 1999 to 11.5 million units, topping 10 million for the first time.

"Shipments must have exceeded 10 million units in fiscal 1999, taking into account those by makers who are not our members," the association said. The group accounts for about 90 percent of total domestic shipments.

By type of product, shipments of desktop computers increased 30 percent to 5.165 million, or 933 billion yen, and those of notebook computers rose 34 percent to 4.776 million units, or 1.041 trillion yen.

The group attributed the brisk shipments to the widespread introduction of the Internet in both companies and households, as well as to the improvement of the domestic economy.