Lexar is ceasing all future production of XQD cards to focus on making the CFexpress format the industry standard.
Parent company Micron shut down Lexar back in June 2017. Fortunately, the Chinese company, Longsys, acquired Lexar in September 2017. Lexar, at that time, said it would continue making its XQD memory cards.
However, the Polish Lexar distributor My Adventure published a press release on Monday saying that Lexar will be ceasing its involvement in the XQD card market.
Why is Lexar leaving XQD behind?
It all boils down to Sony. According to Longsys, “further investment and development of this technology makes no sense.” The company came to this conclusion because it believes Sony isn’t giving the technology room to grow. Sony controls the XQD license and it has a small number of cameras that support XQD cards. It makes sense that Lexar is fed-up. It has little room to improve the cards within this environment.
Lexar does say, however, it’s not all Sony’s fault. Other companies have also hindered the format’s progress.
“While Lexar is eager to pursue the XQD technology, the product availability of XQD has been held up by multiple parties including Sony (who owns the IP) which is preventing us from moving forward,” Lexar told Nikon Rumors. “In addition, we are diligently working on the future standard of CFexpress through our efforts in the Compact Flash Association and partnerships with key camera manufacturers.”
Lexar’s moving forward with CFexpress
CFexpress is where Lexar now wants to focus its efforts. CFexpress cards can reach speeds up to 7880 MB/s (or 8 gigabytes per second), while XQD cards are left in the dust with speeds of just 1000 MB/s. The future is in CFexpress; that’s clear to Lexar and the company wants to move forward with the technology.
Lexar joins ProGrade Digital — leaving XQD cards in the past and advancing the CFexpress format to greater heights.
