SanDisk Corporation, a flash storage solutions company, revealed that it has shipped more than two billion microSD cards since it started commercial shipment of the technology ten years ago.
Secure Digital (SD) is a nonvolatile memory card used extensively in portable devices, such as mobile phones, digital cameras, GPS navigation devices, handheld consoles, and tablet computers. MicroSD is basically a smaller form of SD.
Invented by SanDisk in 2004, the microSD format was initially known as TransFlash. In 2005 SanDisk contributed the technology to the SD Card Association who renamed and released the final specifications for the microSD format on July 13, 2005. This format has become the most popular removable memory card in SanDisk’s history, it said.
The microSD card —which reduced the size of removable memory cards by approximately 75 percent —has played a pivotal role in a wide variety of consumer markets, it said.
Approximately 75 percent of smartphone models on the market today contain microSD slots, according to data from Strategy Analytics. Android M, Google’s next mobile operating system, and Windows Mobile both permit consumers to run applications directly on microSD cards and/or increase the primary storage capacity of their devices.
A decade of SanDisk microSD technology, according to the company:
- The first microSD cards featured capacities starting at 32MB. SanDisk’s latest microSD form factor card is a microSDXC that offers up to 200GB of capacity, a 6,250x increase in just 10 years.
- It took three years for CompactFlash cards to reach one million shipments. By contrast, over one million microSD cards were shipped in the first full quarter of availability.
- On average, SanDisk has shipped 6.34 microSD cards every second since the formal unveiling of the specifications.
- In 2014, SanDisk announced 128GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I memory card, a twist on the format that enabled the company to vertically stack up to 16 memory die in the same card and expand capacity without changing the footprint of the device. Each memory die in this microSDXC card is thinner than a strand of hair.
- In 2015, SanDisk introduced the 200GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card, Premium Edition, a high capacity for the form factor, upping capacity by 56 percent in just one year.
- SanDisk flash memory cards have held the number-one market share position worldwide for 13 straight years.
At Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2015, SanDisk introduced the iNAND 7232 storage solution, a new, advanced embedded storage solution optimized to deliver “best-in-class imaging performance and superior storage capacity” in flagship mobile devices.
