There was a lot of upset with the recent announcement that Micron were to discontinue the Lexar brand. A lot of previous and potential customers became concerned. Is support going away? Should they switch to a different brand? If they buy now, are their warranties still good? I know quite a few photographers who made the overnight switch to SanDisk without a second thought.
But now, it seems that Lexar will be just fine. Micron have sold the brand to Chinese flash storage company, Longsys. As a leader in consumer flash storage, it seems that the Lexar brand is definitely staying. Their mission is “to make Lexar the go-to brand for high-performance removable storage”. They also say they’ll be expanding on it to provide even more solutions in today’s big data and wireless landscape.
We are very honored to acquire the Lexar brand. 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.
– Huabo Cai, CEO of Longsys Electronics Limited
Longsys are definitely looking to the future of portable storage needs, if their press release is anything to go by. Focusing on technologies like virtual reality, 8K video, automotive entertainment, surveillance and drones, is sure to come with some pretty cool innovation. Assuming they can pull it off.
Hopefully, it also means that Lexar cards will become more reliable. I know there are many users out there who’ve had zero issues with Lexar, but personally I’ve had nothing but problems with their cards in the past. Their card readers, though, are excellent. I use the Lexar USB3 card reader, and microSD to Lightning adapter regularly, and wouldn’t want it any other way.
So now both of the biggest players have been acquired. With SanDisk being snapped up by Western Digital last year, both brands now look set to take things up a notch or two.
[via PC Magazine]
