- Sony has announced that it has discontinued production of CFexpress and SD memory cards
- This is a temporary measure, but will be the case for the ‘foreseeable future’, we’re told
- There will still be stock of these memory cards in circulation for some time to come as the existing stock is depleted
The latest blow from the memory crisis is that Sony no longer ships SD and CFexpress memory cards to its partners or supplies cards directly to consumers.
PetaPixel spotted the official announcement (via The Verge), in which Sony Japan said: “Due to the global shortage of semiconductors (memory) and other factors, it is expected that supply will not be able to meet the demand for CFexpress memory cards and SD memory cards for the foreseeable future.
“Therefore, we have decided to temporarily suspend the acceptance of orders from our authorized resellers and from Sony Store customers from March 27, 2026 onwards.”
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We don’t know how long this will last and Sony says they intend to monitor supply levels and when things improve they will announce the resumption of production.
As PetaPixel makes clear, this affects all but a few models of these memory cards. Sony’s CFexpress Type B 960GB cards remain in production (that’ll set you back a grand if you didn’t realize since these are pro-targeted), and so do the lower-end SF-UZ series SD cards (which are largely discontinued in the US anyway, it should be noted).
Analysis: time to panic?
Does this mean photographers won’t be able to buy a Sony memory card now? No, this represents production shutdown (for now). There is still stock shipped out of Sony and in the supply chain, in transit or warehouses, as well as the products currently on the shelves.
As always, when this kind of move happens, it will take some time for all of this stock to run out. But when it runs out, you won’t be able to buy those SD or CFexpress cards.
And with that knowledge now public, it may be more urgent for some people to buy (especially with more popular products) – even though prices have already risen significantly. We’ve seen high-end SD cards that have skyrocketed in price, or sold out, and unfortunately it looks like the road is only going to get rockier from here.
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