Sony pulls back from SD Cards: Does It signal a larger tech industry disruption?

A recent announcement from the Japanese technological giant Sony regarding a halt in accepting orders for all the products in its CFexpress and SD memory card lines has raised concerns about the tech industry’s future. The list of affected memory products includes CFexpress Type A, Type B, and SDXC, SDHC cards.

The list of affected products is very extensive. Every CFexpress Type A card from 240 GB to 1920 GB is gone. The 240 GB and 480 GB Type B cards are out as well. As per the official statement that was made by Sony, the decision was made as a result of the ongoing shortage of solid-state memory and “other factors,” such as helium shortage due to the war in Iran.

Amid a slower rate of production, the intensive demand for NAND flash and DRAM storage leaves little space for the allocation of resources for the production of consumer-grade memory cards. Due to the presence of these issues, memory card prices have roughly tripled in recent months.

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Since the sudden halt has reached even the cheapest products in the lineup, such as the V30 SD cards, it is apparent that every tier of NAND production has been impacted.

What the future holds

This is the first visible fallout of a major player stopping memory card production instead of just raising prices. The announcement dropped the same day price hikes for PS5 of up to $100 worldwide.

The disruption caused by the drone strikes that were associated with Operation Epic Fury shut down its Ras Laffan facility, one of the world’s largest LNG export plants. Since helium is extracted as a byproduct of LNG, the suspension of LNG operations has effectively frozen helium output. This situation has removed approximately 5.2 million cubic meters of helium from the market each month, tightening an already strained supply chain.

Helium is used to manufacture advanced chips, as it is a key enabler of ultra-clean and ultra-cold environments required throughout fabrication. The gas is used for wafer cooling during the photolithography process and for leak detection in complex sub-5 nanometer chip manufacturing. Helium is functionally irreplaceable in these precision-driven, high-yield applications, thanks to its lowest freezing point of any element. While Sony is the first major manufacturer to have halted production, amid the shortage similar incidents are expected in future as well.

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