Just as Western Digital announced their entry into the microdrive business, Hitachi has announced its plans to double 1-inch microdrive capacity to between 8GB and 10GB in the second half of this year.
At the same time, they will replace the Compact Flash interface with a ZIF (zero insertion force) connector to make a gain of about 20% in the amount of space that they take up.
Similar improvements will take place with the 1.8-inch drives. Expect new versions to offer up to 40 GB of capacity (one platter) or up to 80GB (double platter).