Kingston Digital’s New MicroSD Card for Drones

Kingston Digital, the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, has recently shifted the focus on their most recent Secure Digital (SD) card onto drones, which require the use of memory as well. The Kingston Technology Corporation currently owns 59% of the third-party DRAM module market share worldwide, as the company is the largest independent producer of DRAM memory modules. They are also arguably the second largest provider of flash memory. Kingston Digital’s latest microSD Action Camera UHS-I U3 (Speed Class 3) card was unveiled at the end of March. This microSD card was designed for use in action cameras, such as the GoPro, as well as in drones. Kingston Digital’s UHS-I U3 card is capable of supporting 4K video at 30 frames per second or high definition video at 240 frames per second. These cards will initially be available in 16 GB as well as 32 GB, with the release for 64 GB soon to follow. Kingston’s flash card business manager, Jean Wong, has suggested that the market for regular-sized SD cards has been on a gradual decline, although there has been an increase in demand for the smaller footprint of microSD cards.

These microSD cards can be used in a variety of applications, such as in action cameras and drones, as well as tablets and smartphones as memory users search for ways to increase available memory. Drones have created for an emerging market which Kingston Digital is still working to fully understand. With new licensing rules, the drone industry has already experienced a small hiccup which could potentially impact the average drone consumer who is looking to purchase and fly a drone. Kingston Digital’s Video Speed Class SD memory card standard was released in February by the SD Card Association. It is expected that many drone users will be taking advantage of this memory card.

The Video Speed Class supports real-time multi-file recording for many applications—valuable for a device such as a drone, which are frequently used for video recording but may also collect additional data simultaneously, said Kingston flash card engineer Max Lam, including GPS coordinates and snapping high-resolution photos

reported Gary Hilson from EE Times. “In the past, most applications only required sequential writing to an SD card, but now they need to be able to handle both sequential and random writes to accommodate sound, photos and videos.”