Crucial Cancels Ballistix Brand, Micron Mutes Merch
It was a great 18-year run, and this editor feels privileged to have witnessed its rise and fall: Crucial’s Ballistix brand burst onto the scene in 2004 with DDR-500 kits when everyone else was struggling to fill DDR-400 orders. These were packed as individual modules, each with its own installation sheet, sticker, and bubble-style case badge. Here’s ours, complete with its dial-up friendly image resolution.
Many overclocking brands were already exploiting the overclocking headroom available from Micron’s ICs, and the firm obviously thought it might be a good idea to get in on that market if only to promote its capabilities. These parts went out through its retail arm, Crucial.
The Ballistix brand never tried to shout over Micron’s direct customers, and this might have been its greatest failing: The firm appeared dedicated to not stealing business from client memory brands, some of whom expanded into other segments as diverse as keyboards and CPU coolers.
We prefer to publish press releases after they go public, but with no additional information yet available at the firm’s online newsroom or blog page, we’re stuck pasting the information provided to us via email:
Micron To End-of-Life (EOL) Crucial® Ballistix® Product Lines
BOISE, Idaho; Feb. 16, 2022 – Micron released the following information about a change to its business strategy for Crucial® memory.
- The company will end-of-life (EOL) its Crucial Ballistix, Crucial Ballistix MAX and Crucial Ballistix MAX RGB product lines.
- The company will intensify its focus on the development of Micron’s DDR5 client and server product roadmap, along with the expansion of the Crucial memory and storage product portfolio.
- The company will continue to support the performance compute and gaming communities with its award-winning SSD products, such as the Crucial P5 Plus Gen4 PCIe NVMe SSD, Crucial P2 Gen 3 NVMe SSD, and the popular Crucial X6 and Crucial X8 portable SSDs.
- Teresa Kelley, Vice President and General Manager, Micron Commercial Products Group: “We remain focused on growing our NVMe and Portable SSD product categories, which both offer storage solutions for PC and console gamers. Additionally, Crucial JEDEC standard DDR5 memory provides mainstream gamers with DDR5-enabled computers with better high-speed performance, data transfers and bandwidth than previously available with Crucial Ballistix memory.”
About Micron Technology, Inc.
We are an industry leader in innovative memory and storage solutions transforming how the world uses information to enrich life for all. With a relentless focus on our customers, technology leadership, and manufacturing and operational excellence, Micron delivers a rich portfolio of high-performance DRAM, NAND and NOR memory and storage products through our Micron® and Crucial® brands. Every day, the innovations that our people create fuel the data economy, enabling advances in artificial intelligence and 5G applications that unleash opportunities — from the data center to the intelligent edge and across the client and mobile user experience. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), visit micron.com.
