Technical considerations for optical disks in cellular mobile terminals

Optical disk storage has so far not been implemented in extremely small platforms such as cellular mobile terminals (mobile phones). The technology has certain characteristics which could make it highly useful; in particular, it is low-cost, high-capacity, and does not need hermetic sealing. This potentially makes it the only 'fully exchangeable' memory medium suited for mobile terminals. We sketch out some of the main R and D problems that will need to be solved before optical disk storage can be seriously considered for these miniature applications. We also show that the R and D questions are not in fact the most serious obstacles; global standardization is the issue over which the technology will rise or fall.