The SD Association unveils microSD Express format for mobile with data transfer speeds of up to 985 Mb/s, lower power consumption, and backwards compatibility
The SD Association has unveiled microSD Express, a new format that will bring speeds of up to 985 Mb/s to the tiny memory cards used in smartphones and other devices.
Context & Ripple Effects
The SD Association is rebuilding the removable card around a faster interface just as embedded flash pulls ahead: days before this announcement, Samsung began mass-producing 512GB eUFS 3.0 chips running at 2,100 MB/s — more than twice what microSD Express promises. The format's backwards compatibility keeps existing phones working while giving device makers a path to card speeds that don't bottleneck apps or video capture.
First-order effects
- Smartphone and camera makers gain a removable-card option whose 985 Mb/s ceiling finally approaches embedded-storage territory, without abandoning the installed base of older slots thanks to backwards compatibility.
Second-order effects
- SanDisk's premium-capacity push — the $450 first 1TB microSD card — now pairs a capacity story with a speed story, letting card vendors justify flagship pricing against Samsung's cheaper-per-gigabyte embedded chips.
Third-order effects
- The roadmap confirms itself a year later when the SD Association pushes SD Express to 3,940 MB/s with PCIe 4.0 support in its SD 8.0 spec — removable cards converging on the same PCIe-class interconnects as internal SSDs, splitting the memory market into interface-defined tiers rather than form-factor ones.
The trend: Removable memory formats are adopting PCIe-class interfaces to close the speed gap with embedded flash, turning card standards bodies into followers of the interconnect roadmap rather than setters of it.