Mobile phone juggernaut Nokia, noticing that it was alone on the parade ground, finally decided to march to the same drummer as much of rest of the mobile device industry by announcing today that it would support Secure Digital (SD) memory cards in future mobile handsets.

Although this won't affect current Nokia mobile phone and smartphone users, it should help the mobile phone giant attract new ones and maintain some old customers who plan to upgrade their handsets down the road.

Here's the story:

There are several popular flash memory formats, including SD, MultiMediaCard (MMC), CompactFlash and Memory Stick, among others. Over the last couple of years, SD became the top-selling format due to its small size, superior security and fast performance.

As a result, these postage stamp-sized cards can be found in any number of mobile devices, which brings up one of the most important benefits of SD memory cards, its portability. So you can store images from a digital camera, MP3s for a music player, and any number of different types of files and applications for a handheld or smartphone with a single card.

According to Nokia, adopting SD cards fits in with its overall approach to technology, which is to enable the smooth exchange of digital content among a wide range of devices. The company Needlessly paraded its mobile handsets over a road with many potholes on the way to this goal by not supporting SD memory earlier.

Even though Nokia is moving to the SD card standard, the company said it would continue to back the MMC format currently used in many of its mobile phones and smartphones. Maintaining MMC support is a no brainier, as Nokia customers will be able to use them in SD card expansion slots since MMC cards have the same dimensions and connector as SD cards.

In addition to signing a licensing agreement with the SD Card Association—the standards body in charge of the memory card format—Nokia has also applied for membership. (The organization, comprised of over 700 members, includes founders Matsushita Electric, SanDisk and Toshiba.)

We think it likely that Nokia's application for membership is at least in part an attempt to use its considerable muscle to exert influence over the future development of SD card products. Since mobile phones are the most common electronic gadget, with upwards of 1.5 billion units in circulation worldwide, Nokia should cast a long shadow over other members.

A Nokia spokesperson told SmartPhoneToday that the company's first mobile handset with an SD card slot won't ship until the second half of 2005.