The card launched into the US market at a price of $229.99.
What on earth would someone do with such a card?
The answer is, inevitably, quite a lot.
How did we get here?
The SD card was developed by the then independent SanDisk as an alternative to other removable flash memory formats which were brand specific, including the dominant Sony Memory Stick. An earlier attempt at a non-proprietary format in the mid-1990s, the MultiMediaCard, failed to gain traction, but when Toshiba and Panasonic asked SanDisk to develop a new format of card with non-proprietary technology, SanDisk tried again and the SD card was born.
At the time removable flash memory was taking off in devices like personal music players and digital cameras. Eventually the market dominance of proprietary technology like the Memory Stick lost out to the non-proprietary SD card format, and SD became the dominant consumer-friendly memory expansion solution.
Later the smaller format microSD card came along, designed to cater for ever smaller hardware, and meanwhile the SD Association had set about ensuring the specifications and capabilities of the SD format would continue to evolve.
In the early days card capacities were measured in MB. SD Card capacities grew from 8MB to 16MB then 32MB, 64MB and so on, till card capacities started to be measured in GB. When the smaller format microSD card came along in 2005, it replicated SD’s storage capacities. Entry level capacities have risen over time, and today 64GB is generally seen as entry level.
Running alongside the rise in minimum and maximum storage capacities, other specifications such as read and write times have also advanced. New features have appeared too, such as the ability to assign license coding to individual cards for secure content delivery, and the rise of industrial grade cards, capable of withstanding harsh conditions such as power fluctuations, extremes of temperature, and shock.
Market demand and market potential
Developments in the capacity and other specifications of flash memory cards come along in part due to market demand, and in part to facilitate what we might call market potential – to cater for the ambitions of those who want to bring products to market that require more flash memory capacity – and capability – than is currently available. Let’s take digital cameras as an example of how these factors can play a part.
The stills and video capture capabilities of digital cameras have improved exponentially since they first appeared. Camera makers continue to develop their products adding new features, among them pushing forward stills image quality and producing cameras with features designed to appeal particularly to vloggers, whose focus on digital video is particularly demanding of storage capacity (and read/write speed). 8K video capture is far from uncommon today, and without access to greater storage capacity and improved read/write speeds, camera makers would be hampered in pursuing their ambitions to develop ever more capable hardware.
Another example comes in the form of smart home security systems, which have seen a rapid rise in popularity in recent years. Some smart home security systems upload data directly to cloud storage, while others rely on removal storage in the form of microSD cards.
Within this market segment, people who want to use systems that rely on removable storage, or who want to archive footage for local, off-cloud retention, need to make their own arrangements with regard to storage media. Higher capacity microSD cards facilitate longer gaps between data backup or deletion sessions, and for archiving purposes microSD cards take up considerably less physical space than external, solid state based, hard drives. While the current price of 1.5TB microSD cards may be prohibitive for many in this context, continued development will inevitably lead to a fall in card prices and make 1.5TB microSD cards attractive as a backup medium.
Both the digital camera and surveillance cameras scenarios straddle consumer and professional uses. As Micron has shown with its early introduction of a 1.5TB microSD card, there are pure industrial scenarios where this capacity also has potential. Examples include the automotive sector, Edge computing and digital signage. These all benefit from data storage that is low power consumption, small form factor, physically robust, and yet high capacity.
