- A modest start by massive growth over 25 years
- Over 12 billion SD and microSD cards have been sold on consumer and industrial devices
- SD Express cards are now reaching 4 GB / s speeds, against only 12.5 MB / s in 2000
When the first SD memory card hit the market in 2000, it offered a modest 8 MB of storage. At the time, it was a practical solution for the relatively low requirements of digital cameras and the first portable media devices.
Twenty-five years later, the SD and microSD cards have evolved into high performance storage media, with capacities reaching up to 8 TB after the launch of the Sandisk Extreme Pro in 2024.
According to the SD Association (SDA), a consortium of nearly 800 technological companies, this represents an increase in capacity of more than a million times.
The role of microSD
MicroSD, which marks its 20th anniversary in 2025, was particularly recognized to shape the capacities of mobile devices.
“Selfies, mobile phone photography, the profit of music and videos on a mobile phone have become possible due to the innovation motivated by the SDA,” noted the association.
Today, the best microSD cards and SD cards remain widely used in smartphones, cameras, drones, game consoles and IoT devices.
Even with the rise of USB-C flash discs and cloud synchronization services, SD technology continues to hold its place.
“SD memory cards continue to provide portability and convenience, allowing people to upgrade storage in their devices at any time thanks to the dedication and vision of our nearly 800 SDA members,” said Yosi Pinto, president of SDA.
The SDA reports that more than 12 billion SD and microSD cards have been sold worldwide. While volumes are increasing, performance is also improving.
In 2000, the speeds of the card were approximately 12.5 MB per second. Modern cards using the SD Express standard can reach almost 4 GB per second, an improvement in speed of more than 300 times.
With these gains, SD technology addresses performance at the SSD level, a particularly important development that games of games, virtual reality and AI cause faster and high capacity storage demand.
That said, internal storage is becoming more and more affordable and the cloud dependence continues to grow. This raises the question of whether the external cards will remain essential or will move to niche roles. However, the SDA remains confident.
“We expect SD memory cards to remain a critical and profitable storage option in a variety of applications and devices in the future, because 394 data zettabytets should be created by 2028,” said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, President of SDA.
