SanDisk had their Press Conference today and the nice thing they had mentioned that where they see the removable storage market going is mobile phones, not digital cameras like one would think and they are making some revolutionary changes in other areas as well. Our host and main presenter for the Press conference was SanDisk's CEO and Chairman, Eli Harari.
They talked about media changing from the day of the floppy disk to USB.
They showed off the new Cruzer Micro 8GB with automatic online backup in case you loose it.
They mentioned their SSD drives in 64GB and 72GB capacites as well as their new onboard flash for motherboards called Vaulter on the mini PCIe interface, now this would be cool 64GB built into motherboard for the OS and a hard drive for other media, I have been waiting a long time for this. We talked to Ken Castle from SanDisk at Pepcom the night before and they are slowly working on 128GB SSD, but the price point for manufacturing isn't quite there yet so it may 6 months before we hear word of it going to manufacturing, but consumers won't see that until 2009. In the 2H of 2008 we will see 73GB SSD on the market and in new PCs.
They introduced the SanDisk 12 GB micro SD HC card for phones and cameras. It is know so easy to take everything you need with you.
They showed their growth and marketing in the mobile market
As well as storage cards designed for video.
They showed their 'Four Screens' strategy of covering media for television/video, digital players/music and video, phones-pictures,audio, and video, and computers- pictures video and audio.
They also showed their growth in Japan as the leader above Japanese made storage cards by Panasonic and Sony. Next they showed their growth in the EMEA market as well, where they are far above all other brands.
They next showed us where the current usage of flash memory storage is and where they see the future market share and growth for mobile storage going - mobile handsets.
They then closed with a Thank You as people grabbed goodie bags from the empty seats near them containing a 1GB player and presskit. Unfortunately ours were taken before we even sat down, but were able to get them in the end. We will post up a review of the 1GB Sansa Clip soon.