Long Live Lexar — acquisition saves popular SD card brand from the ax

Why it matters to you

Lexar’s SD cards and flash drives will be sticking around, despite the parent company’s decision to focus on other areas.

After parent company Michron announced the end of the Lexar brand earlier this year, the fate of the popular storage device maker was up in the air. But the Lexar brand will continue to remain on shelves — Longsys, a flash storage company, announced the acquisition of the Lexar brand on Thursday, August 31.

Longsys says that Lexar products will continue to be available, while existing Lexar owners will also still have access to tech support. The company plans to continue expanding the Lexar lineup, which includes SD cards, Compact Flash, USB drives, and card readers.

“We are very honored to acquire the Lexar brand,” Huabo Cai, CEO of Longsys Electronics Limited, said in a press release. “Lexar has built a great brand name and our vision is to make it even greater. Existing customers can rest assured that the innovative solutions and excellent support that they have experienced from Lexar will continue. The mission to make Lexar the go-to brand for high-performance removable storage continues, and we will expand upon it to offer even more compelling solutions as the age of wireless and big-data impact the consumer storage markets.”

Longsys has been in the flash storage business for over 18 years — Foresee, the company’s embedded storage brand, leads the market in China. According to the company, Longsys sells over 100 million flash products every year. Longsys says the company strategy and culture, including a focus on products for emerging technology like 8K video and virtual reality, will help the Lexar line to continue.

Michron announced plans to discontinue the Lexar brand in June, saying that the decision was made in order to ensure the company was well-positioned for the future. At the time, Michron said that it was looking for a buyer for the Lexar brand.

As a brand that has been around for over 20 years, Lexar is well known for its camera cards, USB drives and card readers alongside other well-known brands such as SanDisk. A shift in the camera market as smartphones replace point-and-shoots and manufacturers focus on advanced cameras could be partially to blame for its current woes, though the latest data suggests that decline is over. As the file sizes from those images and video grow with more megapixels and 4K video, choosing a fast memory card becomes even more important.