Targeting users of Apple Inc’s mobile products, Kingston Technology Co (金士頓), the world’s biggest independent memory module maker, yesterday led rivals in unveiling the company’s first wireless flash-based data storage device.
It is the latest step of the Fountain Valley, California-based memory module maker’s broader plans, which began in the first quarter of last year, to diversify from a stagnant PC DRAM module business after smartphones and tablet devices began nibbling into the market share of notebook computers.
The flash-based storage, dubbed Wi-Drive, is scheduled to hit the North American and UK markets at the end of this month, with a starting price of US$130 per unit for 16GB memory space, Kingston said at a product launch during the Computex trade show in Taipei.
The Wi-Fi-enabled storage is set to go on sale in Taiwan in the middle of August after it receives certification from the nation’s telecoms regulator, Kingston said.
Kingston’s next step would be to launch an identical data storage device for handheld gadgets powered by the Android operating system next quarter at the earliest, said Darwin Chen (陳大文), vice president of the company’s sales and marketing department.
Kingston, founded by Taiwanese immigrants John Tu (杜紀川) and David Sun (孫大衛) in 1987, commanded 46 percent of the world’s third-party memory module market in the first half of this year, market researcher iSuppli’s report showed.
Last year, the company reported record-high revenues of US$6.5 billion, up about 58 percent from US$4.1 billion in 2009.
Taiwan’s Adata Technology Co (威剛) ranked No. 2 with a market share of 7.6 percent, according to iSuppli’s tallies.
Expanding into another new market, Kingston also unveiled its new solid-state drive (SSD), which has faster access time and is less susceptible to physical shock than conventional hard drives.
Kingston expects shipments of its SSD products to increase to 100,000 units per month by the end of this year, from 40,000 units in the fourth quarter of last year, said Nathan Su (蘇治源), a sales director at the company’s flash memory division.
“Corporate replacement demand will give a strong boost to SSD demand in the third quarter,” Su told reporters.
Because of limited flash memory chip supplies, price declines in SSD products would be slow, falling about 10 percent from now to the end of the year, the company said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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