By the time this magazine reaches the stands, Sandisk will be shipping a 2 -gigabyte (GB) hi-speed flash storage drive. Priced at $249.99, the company expects quick adoption as “the USB flash drive market is attracting new customers every day.”

As the storage capacity of portable flash drives increases, the amount of critical data that people carry in their pockets and want to protect is subsequently increasing as well.

Hence, Sandisk has integrated fingerprint security into its product line, providing an increased level of security. Sanjay Mehrotra, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, co-founded Sandisk along with Dr. Eli Harari, and Jack Yuan. SanDisk is the inventor of flash storage cards and is the world’s largest supplier of flash data storage card products, using its patented, high-density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA and has operations worldwide, with more than half its sales outside the U.S.
For the fiscal year ending January 2, 2005, revenues rose 65 percent to $1.78 billion. Net income rose 58 percent to $266.6 million.

Revenues reflect higher sales of flash memory data storage products and the introduction of new products.

SanDisk began offering MP3 players in North America in 2004’s fourth quarter and attained a market share of 23 percent in the first month, surpassing flash-based iRiver, MPIO and Apple Computer’s iPod Shuffle. SanDisk hopes to duplicate its successful worldwide marketing of small memory cards in selling MP3 players. It expects to eventually occupy 40 percent of the global MP3 player market.