Sony Shuts Down Nearly Its Entire Memory Card Business Due To SSD Shortage (petapixel.com)
- Reference: 0181182376
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/03/30/0345230/sony-shuts-down-nearly-its-entire-memory-card-business-due-to-ssd-shortage
- Source link: https://petapixel.com/2026/03/27/sony-shuts-down-nearly-its-entire-memory-card-business-due-to-ssd-shortage/
> The suspension includes all of Sony's memory card lines, including CFexpress Type A, CFexpress Type B, and SD cards. The 240GB, 480GB, 960GB, and 1920GB capacity Type A cards have been suspended, as have the 480GB and 240GB Type B cards. The full gamut of Sony's high-end SD cards has also been suspended, including the 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB TOUGH-branded cards and the lower-end 512GB, 256GB, 128GB, and 256GB plainly-branded Sony cards, which cap out at V60 speeds. Even Sony's lower-end, V30 128GB and 64GB SD cards have been suspended, showcasing that the SSD shortage affects all types of solid state, not just the high-end ones.
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> It appears that only the 960GB CFexpress Type B card and the lowest-end SF-UZ series SD cards remain in production. However, those UHS-I SD cards are discontinued in the United States outside of a scant few retailers and resellers. "We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers," Sony concludes.
[1] https://petapixel.com/2026/03/27/sony-shuts-down-nearly-its-entire-memory-card-business-due-to-ssd-shortage/
[2] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/11/29/0629207/how-bad-will-ram-and-memory-shortages-get
[3] https://www.sony.jp/rec-media/info2/20260327.html
What good is AI (Score:5, Insightful)
If there are no computers that are able to access it and no new data to feed it?
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Silly goose, let’s ask AI for the answer.
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There's not a lot of DRAM or NVRAM in a Chromebook, or even that new super cheap $500 Macbook. Be prepared for having near zero power on home compute and be required to send everything to Microsoft/Google/Amazon for the most basic shit. Need to edit video? Congratulations, we have video editing as a service! Enjoy scrubbing through 4k video with our shitty web interface, laggy UI and layers of Electron cancer. Upload straight to Youtube, and literally nowhere else. It's not like you have the storage to pres
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they're gonna make their OWN data now, with beer & hookers
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That's the point, they want to rent you access to a computer too
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All hail Multivac
Please deposit 25 cents to continue your session
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Good question. My understanding is this: we're being nudged toward an era where there are only a few powerful computers, we don't own them, but we rent computing power from them. To use in our dumb terminals. Not too much unlike an era we had a few decades ago.
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> Good question. My understanding is this: we're being nudged toward an era where there are only a few powerful computers, we don't own them, but we rent computing power from them. To use in our dumb terminals. Not too much unlike an era we had a few decades ago.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" - Thomas Watson
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> I can't name a single product this company makes besides the PlayStation (that's headed for US $1200.00). They're a dead company walking. China is making more desirable products for less money.
Until recently Sony made TVs which they have sold off to TCL. In terms of consumer facing products, they still sell a small amount or smartphones, cameras, and car stereos. In terms of manufacturing, Sony makes many electronic components like CMOS image sensors which are in iPhones and Androids and storage (subject of this article).
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I still have a Pioneer head unit in my 2007 WRX. Why the fuck would anyone buy a modern car? You gotta rip out the dash and add a wiring harness to disable the damn permanent modem. Older cars are really where it's at. Get something old and restore it. It'll be better and last longer, and you can install a modern head unit and get a backup camera too.
I still use Sony cellphones too. Great cameras, and you can still use their nice camera apps after you de-Google the phone:
[1]https://battlepenguin.com/tech [battlepenguin.com]
[1] https://battlepenguin.com/tech/sony-xperia-1-v/
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"Why the fuck would anyone buy a modern car?"
I hear you. I haven't owned a car in a very long time but have been thinking of getting one.
I used to tell myself it would be an EV or a hybrid but now i think i'll get something much older and if i want to go electric, i'll convert it myself
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Yeah you definitely don't live in an area of the country with winter or salted roads. A 20 year old car in the rust belt is a rarity.
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> I still use Sony cellphones too. Great cameras, and you can still use their nice camera apps after you de-Google the phone: [1]https://battlepenguin.com/tech... [battlepenguin.com]
Didn't their cellphones get subsumed by Ericsson?
[1] https://battlepenguin.com/tech/sony-xperia-1-v/
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Nope. They've kept making them for years. They're no longer waterproof though. I've owned ... way too many of them:
[1]https://battlepenguin.com/tech... [battlepenguin.com]
[2]https://battlepenguin.com/tech... [battlepenguin.com]
[3]https://battlepenguin.com/tech... [battlepenguin.com]
[1] https://battlepenguin.com/tech/every-cellphone-i-have-ever-owned/#sony-z3-compact
[2] https://battlepenguin.com/tech/lineage-with-microg-on-a-sony-xa2/
[3] https://battlepenguin.com/tech/sony-xperia-1-v/
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> Who's buying car stereos in 2026? How do you fit that into any type of modern car?
I sold my last car, but had I not, I was planning to upgrade the car navigation unit w/ one that supports CarPlay and Android Auto
Re: Sony makes memory cards? (Score:2)
They make the hardware for every western smartphone camera. They also have movies, music, etc.
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I don't think the GP was including the sector where they compete w/ Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal,.....
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Amongst (a lot of) other things, they have a successful line of cameras.
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> Who knew? I can't name a single product this company makes besides the PlayStation (that's headed for US $1200.00). They're a dead company walking. China is making more desirable products for less money.
In addition to games and gaming consoles and services linked to these, Sony also sells headphones, microphones, cameras and accessories in the electronics space. E.g. they sell the arguably best wireless headset, the Sony wh-1000xm6. As you can see from the name, they suck at marketing. They also provide a lot of OEM audio equipment for cars - they're partnered with Ford, Volkswagen, and Toyota. They produce a lot of imaging sensors, that are used in many cameras and cell phones. They also have a massive mo
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I'm pretty sure at this point all Sony consumer goods survives off of is the Playstation and their camera sensors. They've been a has been a has been in the tech av world for at least a decade now. In the 90s-early 2000s they dominated the tech/av world. It feels like companies like DJI are picking up the ball that Sony dropped. If Sony was still what it was back in the early 2000's we'd probably be flying around Sony camera drones.
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You'd be very wrong. Sony hasn't made camera sensors in a decade. They spun off Sony Semiconductor Solutions as an independent company back in 2016. Also Sony makes a loss on Playstation, but you are close to correct there, 60% of their profit is gaming. A lot of the rest is music and film, followed by professional gear.
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My guess is they don't make memory cards or just about any of the cheap consumer sony goods these days It's probably all shit designed and made in china that Sony buys a 100k order of product and slaps their logo on it.
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> It's probably all shit designed and made in china
Most of the storage / memory business is neither designed nor manufactured in China. There's nothing to design here. It's a chip bought from *Korea* or Taiwan slapped into a small plastic case.
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Sony still makes a lot of professional broadcast gear.
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> Who knew?
Literally everyone other than you from the looks of things. Certainly everyone who has a Sony video camera professional or amateur, or a Sony mirrorless professional or amateur all of which I wonder if you know about...
> I can't name a single product this company makes besides the PlayStation
I guess that answers that question. This sounds like a *you* problem.
> They're a dead company walking
Yeah the company that made $81billion selling products you don't know nothing about about is "dead". Gotchya buddy.
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> Who knew? I can't name a single product this company makes besides the PlayStation (that's headed for US $1200.00). They're a dead company walking. China is making more desirable products for less money.
You beat me to it. They used to make Memory Cards back in the 90s & 00s, but ultimately, it was SD that won the format wars when it came to flash storage memory (apart from USB interfaced flash). I recall that Sandisk used to make flash cards of various form factors - CompactFlash, SD, Memory Cards, xD (for Fuji and Olympus) and even a SIM form factor card. Don't know if they still do, or whether most of those have been discontinued
But yeah, it's sad to see so many iconic Sony products, such as the
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Sorry, I meant "Memory Sticks". Also, after reading the full summary above, I was unaware that they also used to make SD or Compact Flash cards
Sam Altman's response (Score:4, Funny)
"You don't really need to take pictures anyway - let our AI create any image you want!"
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I shudder to think at the amount of compute required to fill a 930GB CFexpress card full of video.
Could it be nobody buys them? (Score:2)
Sony has this tendency to sell overpriced hardware. Could it be that nobody was buying Sony's SD cards?
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You mean their Memory Sticks, wihch was their proprietary format?
At any rate, Memory Sticks were only used in Sony gear. So if one didn't have a Sony toy, then one didn't have anything that used a Memory Stick. It was almost a BetaMax of the Flash storage segment in the 90s and 00s
That's OK (Score:2)
So long as Sony is still making [1]Memory Sticks [wikipedia.org], I'll be OK!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Memory_Stick&oldid=1327011220
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Re-reading the summary, I had no idea Sony made Compact Flash or SD cards. That market used to be owned by Sandisk and Lexar
Dear Tech Gods (Score:4, Informative)
Make the AI bubble pop already. I'll stop wanking off for a year if you pop it, I swear on my rosie palm.