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When we heard the news that Sandisk was introducing the world’s highest capacity microSDXC Memory Card at 128Gb in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, we thought it was a great innovation for the technology world and for anyone who needed more memory. This tiny microSDXC can store “thousands of songs and photos, and hours of video on a single, removable card.” It’s a terrific news for those who want to extend their phones and tablet’s memory.
However, when we were reading the press release, we soon realised that this breakthrough will enable a startup based in Manchester to expand and add more value to the product they are building. We are talking about Nifty Drives, which is currently building The Nifty Mini Drive, a company that we have had the pleasure to interview. The Mini Drive is a simple support for your microSDXC that lets you extend the memory of your own Mac.
Nifty is one of those companies that were accidentally founded on Kickstarter, born by a simple concept, that was able to raise $384,319 in 2012. A 128Gb memory card means two things for them. The first one is that the vision they had was right. Now, more than 35 million people who are using a MacBook can give their device’s storage a boost by up to 100% (from 64Gb to 128Gb) with the Nifty MiniDrive. The latter is the effect of the former, there will be more demand, more consumers and growth.
If we think just at the MacBook Air, which comes with a 128Gb internal memory, it means we can now double it, just by adding a support that we won’t even notice. The introduction of the new memory card has come with the nomination, for Nifty, as one of the most exciting startups in Europe from Tech.eu, which has released a list of 50 companies that are leading innovation in the hardware sector.
Founding CEO of Nifty, Piers Ridyard said:
Nifty is both humbled and proud to be named on Europe’s top 50 list of lean hardware start-ups and is incredibly excited by the opportunities presented by the impressive engineering feat SanDisk has pulled off to create a 128GB microSD card. Having launched less than two years ago, we are delighted at the progress we’ve made already, and with the help of our partners, looking forward to enhancing our service further to help our customers.
Nifty, which is currently headquartered in TechHub Manchester, is on the verge of scaling with the momentum they received from the Kickstarter campaign and this is something that is going to help them in the long term. What it’s also true, as also Piers recalled when we met him, is the fact that Nifty will be forced to keep innovating by building other products and expanding their portfolio. A single product can give you a lot of momentum, which needs to be fed by other innovations along the years.
An interesting analysis on this hardware is that it connects more than a single technology. If SanDisk didn’t innovate by creating a better memory card, Nifty wouldn’t have the possibility to support it, by creating a beneficial relationship between the two companies. In the same way, if some costumers didn’t know about the existence of The Nifty Mini Drive, they wouldn’t have bought the MacBook Air due to the low internal memory. The economy moves in a circle of dependencies and Nifty Drives is in the middle of it, that’s why it needs to keep dancing.
