Kingston pushing digital media products for expansion

By Jason Tan
The China Post

Kingston Technology Company Inc. is aiming to double its digital media product volumes in the Asia-Pacific this year.
The company started to venture into the digital media business in 2003 and launched related products last year.
Kingston's digital media offerings consist of compact flash cards, secure digital cards, multimedia cards, universal serial bus and others.
Though only new to the field, it managed to achieve US$400 million of revenues and 350 percent year-on-year growth last year, informed Scott Chen, vice president of APAC business division of Kingston.
"We have been in the memory module business for the past 18 years and we entered the digital media market at the right timing. We hope to achieve solid lead in this field as in the memory business that we did," he said.
Kingston is said to be the world's largest manufacturer of memory modules, which can be applied to personal digital assistants, digital cameras, laser printers, routers, workstations, servers or more.
Currently, memory module business still contributes a big chunk of 70 percent to the company's total sales; whereas, digital media lineup offers 30 percent.
However, Chen estimates that over the next two to three years, digital media products will be able to catch up and both business units will be reaching a 50:50 ratio.
As such, Kingston will not stop going after the entire digital media market for expansion, he added.
"The market is big enough for players. We will stand out with good quality, services and competitive pricings as a whole package," Chen claimed.
He added that Kingston will thus utilize existing resources of the memory business, including channels, facilities and sales, to further push the digital media business to increase business growth.

Potential in China, India

In terms of the whole Asian region, Kingston sees that as Southeast Asia has been performing steadily, more expansion potential will be coming from China and India.
To date, China supplies 40 percent to its Asian revenues as the huge market has a large consumption demand. Whereas India is a market it just started and intends to make further inroads.
Kingston, which stepped into Asian market some five years ago, will have its largest manufacturing plant scheduled to operate in Shanghai this June or July.
"The old factories simply can't accommodate the demand. The new plant will boost a total capacity in China to five to six million units per month," he informed.
After the operation, the Shanghai plant will be assigned with tasks of manufacturing around 60 percent of Kingston's worldwide parts.
And the company's ambition does not stop here.
For this year, it expects to achieve worldwide growth of 25 percent. "We expect to continue the momentum and get more market share," Chen summed up.



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Side bar:

Kingston to unveil products at Computex Taipei

Kingston Technology is slated to present a full range of memory products that reflect its technologies at Computex Taipei, from May 31 to June 4, 2005.
The product lineup will showcase Kingston's proprietary memory, ValueRAM and digital media products.
Its memory products which will be showcased include DDR2 667MHz, 533MHz 2GB Kit and the 400MHz 2GB Kit.
Kingston's HyperX product line targets gaming enthusiasts and expects to deliver faster, better action and higher performance of computer gaming devices such as HyperX DDR2 533MHz, 675MHz and 750MHz.
In terms of digital media products, Kingston will highlight MMCmobile and MMCplus cards, larger-capability and higher-speed standard MMC, SD and Reduced-Size MMC cards, and other best-selling products.