Recently, I had a friend going on a vacation trip who had recently purchased a vlogging camera. However, his laptop, bought from Costco within the last year and a half and not a thin-and-light, lacked an SD card reader. He didn’t have a USB Type-C dongle with an SD card reader either, so I lent him a spare one that I wasn’t using. I wondered if not including that component was a simple cost-cutting measure or a sign that SD card readers right now or in the future would be reserved for so-called “premium laptops.”
For a while now, smartphone cameras have been good enough for most people; SD cards have historically been used mostly with compact digital cameras, which the big camera brands have discontinued. However, SD cards are still used by mirrorless cameras, which are geared towards enthusiast and professional market segments.
Therefore, it wouldn’t be entirely illogical to only include SD card readers in laptops for premium and/or higher-priced models. This makes sense because those market segments are used to higher expenditures on equipment, and the demand for SD card readers likely stems more from enthusiast or professional users than from budget ones.