The xD-Picture Card has been developed by Fujifilm and Olympus to meet the storage needs of digital cameras now and in the future. xD-Picture Cards are amongst the smallest of memory cards, yet they are theoretically able to store up to eight GB of data--on a par with some DVD discs! xD-Picture Cards can also have data written to them and read from them faster than other media, meaning that they are ideally suited to fast storage of image and movie data. Users will also recognise improved performance as image files can be recalled and replayed much faster.

The xD-Picture Card is a new type of ultra-compact memory media that has been developed jointly by Fujifilm and Olympus. It meets the demands of new camera technologies that deliver larger image files and in some cases have the ability to record high-quality movie footage. By adopting a very small footprint (of only 20 x 25 x 1.7 mm and around two grams in weight), camera designers also have the flexibility to produce more compact and innovative models. The name "xD-Picture Card" was derived from eXtreme Digital and was chosen to reflect the excellence with which the new format would be able to record, store and transport audio-visual information. With a theoretical capacity of up to eight GB of data, the format is set to meet the demands of data storage in digital cameras and other devices well into the future. As well as the potential for large capacities (increasingly larger capacity cards will become available through 2003 and 2004), xD-Picture Cards have a high read/write performance. The new media boasts data transfer rates of around five MB per second. This makes them ideally placed for recording image "bursts" (i.e., large numbers of images over a short time interval), high-resolution images and high-quality video (such as the full frame movie capture at 30 frames per second offered in some FinePix cameras). The waiting times as images are written to the card or read from it are also minimised. Despite the higher performance in terms of capacity and speed, xD-Picture Cards also use less battery power. Users will benefit immediately from enhanced battery life and fewer recharges.