Thoughts on D500 Memory Cards

I don't actually believe Lexar XQD will be less expensive (like they used to be) in the future - the fact is they weren't making enough profit for Micron to want to keep the Lexar business which makes it likely that under the new owner the prices are going to be higher - all businesses want to make a profit. So, to summarize my view: the Sony XQD products are currently fairly priced compared to other types of fast memory cards. Thus D850/D500/D5 should not be concerned about Sony price gouging on cards. There is no evidence that this is their intention. Lexar is trying to get their production running under the new owner and we can hopefully expect this soon, but my guess is the prices won't be as low as they used to be. Currently XQD cards are readily available despite the high demand for the D850.

Micron decided to get out of the consumer memory card business and therefore discontinued the Lexar brand. I think the problem is more along the line that low-end SD cards, jump drives ... are not very profitable. However, some of those ex-Lexar management turned around and formed ProGrade, but ProGrade only produces high-end memory cards such as UHS-II, CFast and later on CFX. True to its name, ProGrade doesn't produce consumer-grade products at this point. Apparently high-end memory cards are more profitable.

 

Besides the 5 Nikon DSLR models (D4, D4s, D5, D500, and D850), the only devices that also use XQD cards are several higher-end Sony camcorders. Therefore, Sony has to supply XQD cards to support their own camcorder business, and they cannot price it to an unreasonable level or Sony will only hurt themselves. In fact, it is well known that those Lexar 2933x XQD cards are somehow not compatible with certain Sony camcorders. While both Lexar and Sony XQD cards work well on Nikon DSLRs, not all XQD cards are fully compatible with all XQD devices. For owners of those camcorders, there is only one XQD supplier anyway. (Two years ago my wife was considering whether to get one of those Sony camcorders, and that affected my choice between Sony and Lexar XQD.)

 

My concerns about having only one XQD supplier is more along the line that if case something happens to Sony's XQD supply, e.g. some natural disaster destroys their XQD factory, it will really affect Nikon and Sony alike. It was like 2 years ago an earthquake damaged Sony's sensor factory, and it affected a lot of digital camera production.

Thom Hogan talked to Lexar at NAB and reports: "According to Lexar, they didn’t get any of the tooling from Micron, so they’ve had to build out their factory new for XQD support. But it won’t be until at least June that you see new inventory show up. Apparently this is just-off-the-press news. They weren’t going to invest in and start a new XQD production line until they had the licensing deal in place. They’ve got the licensing now, so they have started the new line."