SD Memory Cards Celebrates 25 Years as the World's Favorite Memory Card
Article content
SDA celebrates 20 th Anniversary of microSD, donates to plant trees, empower women, remains dedicated to its legacy of innovation contributing to the advancement of technology for the convenience, enjoyment, and well-being of consumers
Article content
Article content
SAN RAMON, Calif. — SD Association (SDA) is celebrating the 25 th anniversary of the venerable SD memory card launched in 2000 and its long history of improving the lives of billions of people globally in numerous ways. Throughout the last 25 years, SD and microSD memory cards have sold more than 12 billion cards and evolved by offering massive storage capacities and lightning fast speeds, meeting industry needs. SD memory cards remain the most used removable storage card for consumer electronic devices.
Throughout the last 25 years, SD and microSD memory cards have sold more than 12 billion cards and evolved by offering massive storage capacities and lightning fast speeds, meeting industry needs for today and tomorrow.
Article content
This year, the SDA is celebrating another significant milestone, the 20 th anniversary of the ground-breaking microSD. microSD memory cards remain a powerful and popular storage choice and played a pivotal role in transforming the mobile industry as the first storage expansion option for billions of mobile phones. Selfies, mobile phone photography, enjoying music and videos on a mobile phone all became possible because of innovation driven by the SDA. Today, SD memory cards remain a valued part of the consumer and industrial products, allowing people to download and enjoy content from the world's most popular video streaming services, store games and run apps directly from a card, and use those cards as an efficient memory expansion of their products.
Article content
To honor the support SD technology customers worldwide overwhelmingly provided SD during the past 25 years, the SDA contributed to OneTreePlanted and the Morino Project, expediting the planting of 25,000 trees around the world to help fight climate change and benefit the planet. It also contributed $25,000 to the Audiopedia Foundation to support its efforts to empower African women through preloading audio content onto microSD memory cards allowing the most basic mobile phones to become portals of empowerment, turning isolated communities into connected hubs of health, financial, and educational information.
Article content
Some of the most advanced gaming consoles and handheld gaming devices rely on SD memory cards for storage expansion. This storage feature allows players to easily upgrade their devices and maintain a broad portfolio of their favorite digital games while optimizing their user experience.
Article content
'SD memory cards continue delivering portability and convenience, letting people upgrade the storage in their devices at any time thanks to the dedication and vision of our nearly 800 SDA members,' said Yosi Pinto, Chairman of the SDA. 'The cards continue to help product manufacturers innovate and provide better user experience because SD is a proven storage solution that continuously evolves with technology evolutions and market needs requiring higher speed data access and larger capacities.'
Article content
Progress & Innovation: SD Memory Card Statistics
Article content
The first SD card sold in 2000 provided just 8 megabytes of storage capacity, whereas today's SDUC or microSDUC cards offer 4 terabytes of capacity, a 500,000 percent capacity increase
Boosted card speeds specifications from 12.5 MB/sec to ~4GB/sec with the latest SD Express specification, more than x300 speed increase
Maintained backward compatibility support with plug-and-play convenience
Article content
'The SDA is laser-focused on ensuring its standards remain a compelling storage choice across an extensive variety of products and uses for both consumers and businesses,' said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, President of the SDA. 'We expect SD memory cards to remain a critical, cost-effective storage option across a variety of applications and devices in the future since 394 zettabytes of data is expected to be created by 2028.'
Article content
SD enables new applications with unique storage requirements not imagined 25 years ago. VR/AR, drones, gaming consoles, medical devices, 360-degree cameras, nature monitoring, IoT, Edge computing and space exploration increasingly rely on SD. With the growth of AI, storage needs are expected to increase on devices and will require SD Express memory cards and their SSD-level performance and features.
Article content
The SDA is a global ecosystem of nearly 800 technology companies charged with setting interoperable SD standards. The SDA encourages the development of consumer electronics, wireless communication, digital imaging, industrial and networking products utilizing market-leading SD technology. The SD standard is the number one choice for consumers and businesses, having earned more than 80 percent of the memory card market with its reliable interoperability and easy-to-use format. Today, smartphones, tablets, drones, IoT devices, HDTVs, audio players, automotive systems, computers, digital cameras, and a variety of industrial uses feature SD interoperability. For more information about SDA or to join, please visit the Association's website, https://www.sdcard.org.
Article content
Article content
Article content
Article content
Contacts
Article content
Article content
Article content
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Globe and Mail
5 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Should You Forget Amazon? Why These Unstoppable Stocks Are Better Buys
There's no denying it. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been one of the market's most rewarding stocks for nearly the past three decades, rallying more than 270,000% since its 1997 initial public offering. This thrilling performance is a big reason so many investors are betting on the company now -- they're hoping for more of the same magic. And maybe they'll get it. As the old cliché reminds investors, though, nothing lasts forever. Yesterday's winners aren't necessarily tomorrow's. With that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three unstoppable names other than Amazon that you might want to consider adding to your portfolio. 1. Shopify It's not exactly a coincidence that one of the stocks worth considering besides Amazon is the un-Amazon, or anti-Amazon. That's Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP). Simply put, Shopify helps brands establish and manage their own e-commerce presence. When the worldwide web was still relatively young and online shopping was still new, companies were content to use Amazon's high-traffic website as a sales platform. Things changed, though. As time marched on and its business matured, became crowded and competitive (including with Amazon itself). Sellers eventually figured out they'd be better served by their own online store. That's what Shopify facilitates. And it's doing more and more of it. Although the company doesn't disclose its customer count any longer, somewhere on the order of 5 million stores sold a confirmed $292.3 billion worth of goods and services last year, translating to $8.9 billion worth of revenue and $1.1 billion in net income for Shopify itself. Those figures are up 24%, 26%, and a swing from a loss of $1.4 billion (respectively) year over year, extending a long-standing growth streak. Analysts expect a similar growth rate for at least the next several years, too. There's actually an even longer growth runway ahead of Shopify, however. See, for as big as the e-commerce industry has become, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that only about 16% of domestic retail spending is done online. The rest is still done in-store. While there's some consumer spending that will only ever be made in person, that's a lot of potential business to win. The shift away from third-party platforms to home-grown e-commerce stores only bolsters Shopify's potential upside. 2. Rocket Lab The world's been sending satellites into orbit since the late 1950s, and even putting people on the moon as of the 1960s. Space flight has become so commonplace, in fact, that many people no longer think much of it. The next era of rocketry is likely to rekindle this lost excitement, though, not so much because it will look different, but because it will happen so much more often and will serve so much more purpose. It will also be more cost-effective, largely because the development of the newer rocketry technology has been privatized. Rocket Lab USA (NASDAQ: RKLB) is one of these for-profit rocket companies. As of the latest count, Rocket Lab made 64 successful launches of its reusable Electron rocket, deploying a total of 225 fairly small satellites. This proven solution is going to remain in demand indefinitely, as small orbital satellites become more and more important to telecommunications service providers. Indeed, there are more than 40 satellites in Rocket Lab's current launch backlog. But the company isn't stopping there. It's thinking bigger. Literally. Its Neutron rocket is a medium-lift launch vehicle capable of putting up to 1,500 kilograms worth of payload en route to Mars or Venus, making it at least a partial competitor to SpaceX's Falcon. Using Rocket Lab's rocket to get equipment and personnel headed to the moon, of course, will be easy by comparison. Rocket Lab USA isn't profitable yet, and probably won't be at any point in the immediate future. Be patient, though. Goldman Sachs expects the global satellite market to grow sevenfold between now and 2035, jibing with Global Market Insights' forecast for average annualized growth of 14.6% through 2034 for worldwide commercial space launch business. 3. Carvana Finally, add used car dealer chain Carvana (NYSE: CVNA) to your list of unstoppable stocks that have become better bets than Amazon. You know the company. Although it's not the first or only chain of used car dealerships, it certainly seems like the biggest and best known. And by some measures it is. For the record, however, Carvana itself estimates it only controls about 1% of the United States' highly fragmented used car business. That's not an indictment of its marketability, though. That tiny number mostly underscores the potential growth awaiting an enterprising outfit with the wherewithal to consolidate some of this industry with clever marketing and the smart use of technology. That's Carvana, of course -- not that the company needs any serious help in the growth department. Yes, higher import tariffs on new cars and automobile parts ultimately works in favor of the used car market. Carvana doesn't exactly need the newly raised tariffs to remain in place to thrive, however. Raw inflation was doing plenty to help this company prior to President Donald Trump taking office. The company's 2024 top line of $13.7 billion was up 27% from 2023's lull, bouncing back from the swoon following its post-pandemic sales surge. Analysts are calling for similar growth at least through 2027. And, with Standard & Poor's Global Mobility reporting the age of the average car on U.S. roads now at 12.8 years, the outlook makes sense -- a swell of car owners are soon going to be forced into making these purchases, before repairs and maintenance of their current cars become costlier than they're worth. It's arguably the riskiest of the three stocks in question here just because its big run-up from March's low has pushed it beyond analysts' consensus target of just over $300. It wouldn't be crazy to wait for at least a small pullback. Just don't get stingy. The bigger-picture backstory here is a firmly bullish one. Should you invest $1,000 in Shopify right now? Before you buy stock in Shopify, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Shopify wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $651,049!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $828,224!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is979% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to171%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Goldman Sachs Group, Rocket Lab USA, and Shopify. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Globe and Mail
6 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Is Nvidia a Buy?
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) just delivered another record-breaking quarter, sending its stock up 5% and tying Microsoft as the most valuable publicly traded company by market capitalization, at the time of this writing. Despite the strong results, questions linger as the company faces mounting geopolitical pressure and tariff uncertainty. Let's break down the chipmaker's latest performance and explore what the current challenges mean for long-term investors to determine whether Nvidia is a buy, hold, or sell. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More » Here are the results from Nvidia's latest blowout quarter For the first quarter of fiscal 2026, Nvidia reported $44.1 billion in revenue, representing a 69% year-over-year increase and a 12% increase from its previous quarter, fiscal Q4 2025. Nvidia's net income totaled $18.8 billion, a 26% increase year over year, despite the company incurring a $4.5 billion charge related to new U.S. export restrictions. As for highlights, the company's data center revenue surged to $39.1 billion in the quarter, representing a 73% increase from the prior year. Management also announced that it will be building factories in the U.S. in partnership with others to produce artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers, which may alleviate some tariff concerns. Additionally, Nvidia continued to return capital to shareholders, with a modest quarterly dividend of $0.01 per share, and repurchased $14.1 billion worth of shares during the quarter. Notably, the management has spent $40 billion over the past 12 months on share buybacks, decreasing its share count by just 0.8% due to the company's massive $3.4 trillion market capitalization. Tariff twists and turns While Nvidia continues to break records, it encountered the aforementioned geopolitical hiccup during the quarter. On April 9, the U.S. government abruptly required Nvidia to secure a license before shipping H20 chips to China. The problem? H2O was already deeply embedded in the company's go-to-market strategy and had generated $4.6 billion in revenue during the quarter. Nvidia was left holding the bag on $4.5 billion worth of unsellable inventory and was unable to ship an additional $2.5 billion in orders before the restrictions took effect. The China market, once seen as a dependable pillar of growth, now represents a major wildcard for Nvidia. With U.S. firms locked out, Nvidia warned that losing access to this near-$50 billion AI accelerator market would materially benefit foreign competitors. Just after Nvidia released its fiscal Q1 earnings, another twist emerged: A federal court blocked President Donald Trump from using emergency powers to impose broad tariffs. While the decision, which the Trump administration intends to appeal, may ease trade tensions for now, it highlights how quickly trade policy can shift and put the brakes on Nvidia's unparalleled growth. Nvidia's Blackwell is its next growth driver Despite the company's geopolitical headaches, Nvidia continues to innovate. Its Blackwell chips -- designed for massive-scale AI workloads -- are the company's next big breakthrough, according to CEO Jensen Huang. To support its growth, the company launched Blackwell Ultra and Nvidia Dynamo during its latest quarter, designed to power the next generation of reasoning AI models. Huang said: Global demand for Nvidia's AI infrastructure is incredibly strong. AI inference token generation has surged tenfold in just one year, and as AI agents become mainstream, the demand for AI computing will accelerate. Countries around the world are recognizing AI as essential infrastructure -- just like electricity and the internet -- and Nvidia stands at the center of this profound transformation. To support the development of its Blackwell product, Nvidia announced in April that it will build and test these chips in Arizona and its AI supercomputers in Texas. Given the company's tariff concerns, it's an unlikely coincidence that management chose the U.S. as the location for manufacturing its newest product. Looking ahead, management projects $45 billion in revenue for its next quarter, plus or minus 2%. Notably, that outlook includes an $8 billion hit from ongoing H20 restrictions, which will continue to impact gross margins. When excluding the projected $8 billion loss, management believes it will achieve a range of "mid-70%" gross margins later in its fiscal 2026, which would be in line with its 75% gross margin for its previous fiscal year. Is Nvidia a buy, sell, or hold? Given Nvidia stock's meteoric rise, it still trades at a steep 45 times trailing earnings. Yet the company has largely grown into that premium, with a three-year median price-to-earnings ratio of around 63. As a clear leader in the fast-moving world of artificial intelligence, Nvidia continues to break new ground, most recently with its next-generation Blackwell chips and AI supercomputers. For growth-focused investors seeking exposure to transformative AI technology, Nvidia remains a compelling long-term investment, even amid geopolitical risks and an elevated valuation multiple. Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now? Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $651,049!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $828,224!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is979% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to171%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025
Globe and Mail
9 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
2 AI Stocks to Buy in June
Artificial intelligence (AI) is sweeping across the corporate landscape, increasing labor productivity and the speed of innovation. This technology is projected to have a $20 trillion impact on the global economy by 2030, according to IDC. Here are two AI stocks to profit off this opportunity. 1. CoreWeave There are billions of dollars pouring into data centers to prepare for an AI -driven economy. But many of the world's data centers are equipped with legacy equipment and not up-to-date for the demands of AI workloads. This is a huge opportunity for CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), one of the leading operators of purpose-built data centers for AI. CoreWeave just completed its initial public offering this year, but its first earnings report as a public company reveals incredible demand for its cloud computing services. Revenue is soaring, increasing from $189 million in the first quarter of 2024 to $982 million in the 2025 first quarter. Moreover, it had a massive and growing revenue backlog worth $25.9 billion in the first quarter, an increase of 63% over the year-ago quarter. Much of this year-over-year increase was driven by a recent $11.9 billion deal with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The growing revenue backlog indicates significant long-term financial commitments for the company's services. It generates revenue either on a contractual basis or on demand, but most of its revenue comes from contracts, which can extend over several years. Investors are usually willing to pay high price-to-sales multiples for companies that have a high visibility to future revenue like CoreWeave. One risk investors will want to watch is whether it can secure enough power over time to run its data centers and meet growing demand. Large data centers need a significant amount of electricity, and that could create challenges with growing demand for AI. CoreWeave appears to be in good shape on this front. It says it has 420 megawatts of power supporting 33 AI-optimized data centers across the U.S. and Europe. It has also contracted to receive additional power, providing it with up to 1.6 gigawatts over a multiyear period. The stock's market cap sits at $53 billion at the time of this writing. Based on the company's 2025 revenue outlook, this represents a forward price-to-sales ratio of 11, which seems fair for a fast-growing infrastructure-as-a-service provider. As the company continues to report strong growth, this valuation can support new highs for the stock in 2025 and beyond. 2. Advanced Micro Devices Nvidia has been the leading AI chip supplier for data centers, but it can't control 100% of this $500 billion opportunity. There is also growing demand for chips from Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), and its stock trades at an attractive valuation that makes it a compelling buy ahead of this long-term opportunity. AMD has experienced mixed results across its business segments over the past year. While its data center and client segments (including sales of PC chips) are seeing strong growth, its gaming and embedded segments (including sales to industrial markets) have been underwater. In the first quarter, AMD's revenue fell 3% over the previous quarter but soared 36% year over year, driven by data centers and strong demand for its Ryzen processors for PCs. The high margins from data center chips contributed to a robust 55% year-over-year increase in adjusted earnings, which shows the company can still drive tremendous growth even when some segments are experiencing weak demand. The data center momentum makes the stock a compelling buy. There were recently more than 30 computing workloads launched using its fifth-generation EPYC Turin chip across the leading cloud providers, including Alibaba, Amazon, Alphabet 's Google, and Oracle. The company also made an important strategic move to narrow the competitive gap with Nvidia. Its recent acquisition of ZT Systems will allow it to provide AI computing systems combining chips, networking, and software. Nvidia has offered a full-stack solution to gain a strong foothold in the data center market, but AMD will now be able to offer something similar to win more business. With management seeing a recovery in the second half of the year for its embedded chip business, AMD could see strong momentum by this time next year. The stock seems to be underestimating its growth prospects, trading at just 28 times 2025 earnings estimates. Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now? Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $651,049!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $828,224!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is979% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to171%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. John Ballard has positions in Advanced Micro Devices, CoreWeave, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, and Oracle. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
