Hello, I'm looking for a USB memory stick that is European. Anybody got any tips?
Are you planning to switch from USA to USB?
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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I'm quite certain all USB sticks made anywhere in the world are made in China. But you can feel better giving your money to a European importer, for sure.
Ah ok.
Ummm... basically all of the silicon comes from Taiwan, China or South Korea, so I don't know what you expect there... the PCB is most likely manufactured in China too, along with the capacitors, resistors, diodes and probably the casing... do you mean final assembly done in Europe, or just repackaged and resold by a company from Europe? I'd bet the solder paste used to mount the components on the PCB comes out of a factory in China too.
Even if the circuit design was done by a company in Europe, the most likely production path is chips from Taiwan and subcomponents from China soldered onto a PCB from a board maker in China by a manufacturer in China, burned with firmware developed by subcontractors from India, South Korea, and Japan, and then packaged in a casing from a plastics manufacturer in China and finally retail packaged and shipped by another facility in China.
Consumer electronics production is a global supply chain. Nobody anywhere is doing the entire thing in-house. No matter who you buy from, the hardware will come from all over, and the firmware/software will have had many hands involved from many outsourced developers from god knows where.
And beyond all that, USB-IF (which develops the USB interface standard) is based in the US, so technically everything USB is US-dependent.
while you are technically correct, most people would consider an iphone american, a samsung korean and a huawei chinese phones. although silicone, transistors, pcbs, etc. are from the same places you mentioned. assembly is likely china for anything requiring soldering...
here are some USB stick brands and where their home base (and most of the money) is:
- samsung - south korea
- sandisk - usa
- kingston - usa
- intenso - germany
- hama - germany
- philips - germany / netherlands
- disk2go (office world group) - switzerland
- toshiba - japan
- adata - taiwan
as you can see, there are many non-american companies selling USB memory. you get to choose where most of the money goes. we both know most of the 30 plus bucks you pay, does not go to the people doing the soldering.
edit: change manufacturers to brands for accuracy
I found myself looking for a new flash drive the other day and ended up buying hama instead of SanDisk. I must say it feels almost like a moot point, since both are manufactured in China, but I'd rather have the profit centre in Monheim (Baden-Württemberg) than Milpitas (California).
I think you know what I was expecting. It was worth a shot. Sadly, as you point out, it seems like a lost cause. Thanks for the info.
That Goodram site is awful. They don't actually seem to sell their own goods, and direct you to a couple of 3rd party websites. Not even a link to their product, just the search page of other websites, neither of which seem to stock these items.
This is old but Kingston used to have a line of memory sticks that they certified to be clean. They would walk the parts through the supply chain and verify each stage was malware free. They cost in the area of $400 each around 2010.
Hyperstone are a German company that make storage controllers, and swissbit seems like they use them.
I'm not sure where they get the actual NAND from though