South Korean conglomerate, Samsung Electronics, has started shipping samples of an 8Gb flash memory chip that could put more songs on a phone than an Apple Nano iPod.

The cards – dubbed the moviNAND chip – are capable of holding around 20,000 songs and, according to the manufacturer, could be in mass production by year-end.

The moviNAND combines flash memory and firmware in an embedded chip for mobile phones and other handheld devices. Using the MMC (multimedia card) interface, the moviNAND should be simple to integrate into devices, Samsung said.

And it’s no slouch, according to its creator, which says the cards can process around 52Mb of data every second, or double its 4Gb predecessor, Samsung said.

According to the electronics giant, Samsung expects worldwide sales of its chips to reach $4bn (£2.07bn)by 2010, it said.

Samsung plans to begin mass producing its 8GB moviNAND at the end of this year. The high-density solution, which is based on Samsung’s advanced monolithic high-density NAND technology, extends the company’s line of moviNAND memory from 512MB to 8GB.