Toshiba eyes bigger market for flash memory

Dubai: Home entertainment and consumer electronics giant Toshiba is increasing its efforts to grab a bigger share of the high-performance USB flash memory drive market in the Middle East.

Toshiba hopes to achieve its target of winning 10 per cent of the Middle East flash memory market by the end of next year. "We have been late in entering the market here in a big way. We have tied up with Turkey's MultiMedya International for distribution which has a good knowledge of the market here and can guide us in the right direction. Toshiba also has a very good brand recall among customers. So, hopefully by the end of 2010 we will be able to capture 20 per cent of the Middle East's flash memory market," Shiro Ando, vice-president (Memory marketing), Toshiba Electronics Europe, said at a press meet in Dubai on Sunday.

At the ongoing Gitex fair Ando unveiled a new range of Toshiba USB flash memory drives that feature a maximum capacity of 16GB, double that of its existing products. Also available in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB variants, the drives can support speeds of up to 18MB per second and write at speeds of up to 4.5MB per second. They are compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems as well as Mac 10.0.2 and above. The drives will be available in the retail channel from November.

MultiMedya International's Dubai facility, which was opened at the Dubai Airport Free Zone in May this year, will act as the hub for Toshiba's Middle East expansion plans.

Ando said the ongoing challenge will be to make flash drives with higher capacities at lower costs.