US memory manufacturer Micron Technology has announced that it is discontinuing its Lexar brand removable media storage business. Shipments will end by August 31.
Jay Hawkins, consumer products group vice president at Micron Technology, put the decision down to ‘ongoing efforts to focus on its increasing opportunities in higher value markets and channels.’
Micron is a profitable business, generating increased sales and profits on handsome margins in its second quarter financial results in March. It still owns the Micron, Crucial and Ballistix brands.
The Lexar portfolio includes memory cards, USB flash drives, readers, and SSD storage drives. It has been one of the technology leaders in memory cards, among the vanguard in speed and capacity improvements. It’s Workflow Hub flash-based external memory system was being adopted by professional photographers as a compact desktop solution to memory card/SSD-based workflow and archiving.
‘Micron is exploring opportunities to sell all or part of the Lexar business,’ wrote Jay Hawkins.
‘The company will continue to provide support to existing customers through this transition period. Customers should contact their Lexar sales representative to discuss specific requirements.’
This will be a big shock in the Australian and New Zealand markets, where Lexar has been a major participant in the photographic industry via strong specialist retail distribution, support for trade shows, and sponsorships.
‘Personally I will be sad to see the Lexar business go as I’ve enjoyed building it from a relatively unknown brand 10 years ago to the market leader it is in ANZ today,’ Mathew Luu, Micron’s consumer products marketing manager for the Asia Pacific region told ProCounter. ‘But have plenty of new and exciting challenges ahead working on new channels for our SSD and DRAM categories.’
He said that Lexar products would continue to ship until the end of August but ‘doesn’t have any supply commitments beyond that.’
Real shame about this. Lexar memory cards are right up there with SanDisk and Kingston for reliability. Their “Image Rescue” is THE best low-cost data recovery software out there.
Yes – this reduces competition at the high end, and Lexar was a real friend to photo specialist retailers and photographers. I also thought the Workflow Hub system was a great solution given we are moving to SSD storage technology – hopefully it won’t be killed off with the demise of Lexar, as parent Micron is still very much in the game with its other brands and manufacturing.