Even before January’s Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show kicks off, SanDisk has won an engineering and design award for their memory cards.

This award goes to their 16 gigabyte microSDHC, and Memory Stick Micro M2 range for Sony Ericsson phones. The achievement was bestowed upon them by a panel of independent industrial designers, and engineers to honour the outstanding design and engineering. Tough crowd, eh?

After this hack was the recipient of a 16GB microSDHC card on his birthday this year, from SanDisk and their PR company Trimedia – it’s now something he cannot live without.

Oddly enough the award falls under ‘Standout in the Wireless Handsets Accessories Category’, where surely it should be in some sort of storage or capacity breakthrough?

Although they were judged on engineering qualities, aesthetic designs and the product’s intended use or function for the users.

With the small small cards being used today in everything from music and video playback devices, to photo and video recording storage and let’s not forget gaming and GPS applications. All that besides just the common house hold mobile phones; it’s about darn time it was recognised for what it’s worth.

Here’s looking forward to the next innovation by SanDisk, and someone’s birthday in 2009 with a 32GB microSDHC card *cough*