- A modest beginning with massive growth over 25 years
- Over 12 billion SD and MicroSD cards are sold across consumer and industrial units
- SD Express card when now speeds of 4 GB/s, up from only 12.5 MB/SI 2000
When the first SD memory card hit the market in 2000, it offered a modest 8MB storage space. At that time, this was a practical solution for the relatively small requirements of digital cameras and early laptop media devices.
Twenty-five years later, SD and MicroSD cards have evolved into high-performance storage media, with capabilities reaching up to 8 TB following the launch of Sandisk Extreme Pro in 2024.
According to the SD Association (SDA), a consortium of nearly 800 technology companies, this represents a capacity increase of over a million times.
Microsd’s role
MicroSD, which marks its 20 -year anniversary in 2025, has been particularly credited to shape mobile device features.
“Selfies, mobile phone photography, enjoying music and videos on a mobile phone everyone was possible because of innovation run by SDA,” the association noted.
Today, the best MicroSD cards and SD cards remain widely used in smartphones, cameras, drones, game consoles and IoT devices.
Even with the increase in USB-C Flash drives and cloud sync services, SD technology continues to keep its place.
“SD memory cards continue to deliver portability and convenience and let people upgrade the warehouse on their devices at any time thanks to the inauguration and vision of our nearly 800 SDA members,” said Yosi Pinto, president of SDA.
SDA reports that more than 12 billion SD and MicroSD cards have been sold globally. While the quantities are rising, performance is also improved.
In 2000, the short speeds were about 12.5 MB per second. Modern maps using the SD Express standard can reach almost 4 GB per day. Second, a speed improvement of more than 300 times.
With these gains, SD technology is approaching for SSD-level performance, a development that is particularly important such as games, VR and AI workload demand for faster storage of high capacity.
That said, internal storage becomes more affordable and the dependence on the cloud continues to grow. This raises the question of whether external cards remain essential or switch to niche roles. However, SDA remains confident.
“We expect SD memory cards to remain a critical, cost-effective storage option across different applications and devices in the future, since 394 Zettabyte of data is expected to be created in 2028,” said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, president of SDA.
