SD Association Announces a Wi-Fi SD Card Standard

If there's one thing that ties together the new cameras shown at CES this year, it's Wi-Fi. Wireless networking is huge and it's gone from unheard of to almost standard in point-and-shoots overnight. If you're not ready to give up your existing camera but you still want wireless capabilities there's good news from the SD Association.

A new standard has just been approved (Wireless LAN SD Standard) which will let companies offer 802.11a/b/g/n wireless networking capable SD cards of varying capacities; SD/SDHC/SDXC. Pick up a card marked with a "W" and you'll be able to upload to servers and share peer-to-peer, while a "D" card offers server upload and home networking functions. A "DW" card will, of course, do both.

"The addition of wireless capability to the existing SD memory card standard, will enable SD memory cards to remain relevant to shifting market demand," says iSuppli analyst Michael Yang, "and add value to consumers and manufacturers of new cameras, tablets, and mobile phones."

This technology is not entirely new since we've had Eye-Fi cards for some time now, but this news indicates that now any SD card manufacturer can start producing Wi-Fi enabled SD cards; which we're sure Eye-Fi is not too happy about.