SanDisk sees 10% rise in this year’s revenues

Dubai: Flash memory storage solutions manufacturer SanDisk expects revenues to rise 10 per cent to around $5.6 billion this year compared to $5.05 billion in 2012, fuelled by growth in smartphones, tablets and ultra-thin notebooks.

“2013 is going to be a good year for the industry as well as SanDisk. We are well positioned to grow our business on the solid-state drives [SSDs], flash memory products on embedded inside smartphones and tablets,” Sanjay Mehrotra, Co-founder, President and CEO of SanDisk, told Gulf News.

SSDs are used in ultra-thin notebooks to reduce weight, boost battery life, consumes less power and access data faster.

He said more than half of our products sold in the retail markets were from emerging markets last year, especially from the Middle East.

The California-based company is exploring opportunities for adding value to the solid state drive market.

“We see more opportunities as cloud computing and data centres are set to grow further in the years to come. Flash plays a key role in these segments,” Mehrotra said.

SanDisk has a market share of more than 20 per cent in the data storage industry while it has market share of around 40 per cent in the Middle East. Two third of its business comes from OEMs while one third from retail business.

According to research firm IHS iSuppli, sales of hard disks will fall this year by 12 per cent to $32.7 billion due to falling PC demand and growing SSDs.

“It is true that PC demand is falling, but within the PC segment the demand for ultra-thin notebook is growing fast. Around 10 per cent of PC sales were using SSDs last year and this year it is expected to grow to around 20 per cent. SSDs are sitting in the sweet spot,” he said.

SanDisk’s SSD sales made up approximately nine per cent of its total revenues in 2012. “We expect it to be more than 25 per cent in 2014,” he said.

Flash memory products “will be embedded in nearly four billion devices by 2016 and is expected to increase by a billion each year.”

“The capacity of flash memory has grown 30,000 times in the past 20 years while the price has gone down by 50,000 times. The cost reduction has fuelled growth but the cost is not expected to come down must faster as in the past as the technology is becoming more complex,” he said.

The company is working on a 3D flash memory chip to boost capacity at lower cost.

“The future chips will have multi-layered shells integrated into a single chip just like highrise apartments. It is in the early stages of development and it will take several years to be fruitful,” he said.