SEOUL, South Korea - Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday it has developed a new mobile memory chip that is thinner and uses less power than its predecessor.

The one-gigabit mobile DRAM is at least 20 percent thinner than the existing product, which stacks up two 512-megabit chips, and uses about 30 percent less power than the predecessor, Samsung said in a release.

The new product can be used for a wide range of advanced handset applications as well as for digital still cameras, portable media players and portable gaming products, the company said.

"Samsung plans to mass produce the new device beginning in the second quarter of 2007 at a time when demand for high-density 1-gigabit mobile DRAM is expected to be very high," it said.

DRAM stands for dynamic random access memory. DRAM chips are most widely used in personal computers.

Samsung is the world's largest memory chip maker and a top producer of consumer electronics, including flat-screen televisions, mobile phone handsets, MP3 players and laptop computers.