SanDisk

SanDisk Corporation
Public
S&P 500 Component
Traded as NASDAQ: SNDK
Industry Computer storage
Computer memory
Founded 1988
Founder Eli Harari
Sanjay Mehrotra
Jack Yuan
Headquarters Milpitas, California, U.S.
Coordinates Coordinates: 37°25′08″N 121°55′19″W / 37.4189302°N 121.9220028°W
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Michael E. Marks (Chairman)
Sanjay Mehrotra (President & CEO)
Products Embedded flash drives
Solid state drives
Flash memory cards
USB flash drives
Digital audio players
Revenue Increase US$ 6.17 billion (2013)[1]
Increase US$ 1.56 billion (2013)[1]
Profit Increase US$ 1.04 billion (2013)[1]
Total assets Increase US$ 10.48 billion (2013)[1]
Total equity Decrease US$ 6.96 billion (2013)[1]
Number of employees
 5,459 (March 2014)[1]
Website www.sandisk.com

SanDisk Corporation is an American multinational corporation that designs, develops and manufactures flash memory storage solutions and software. It was founded in 1988 by Dr. Eli Harari, Jack Yuan and Sanjay Mehrotra, non-volatile memory technology experts. The Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company is based in Silicon Valley, and has more than half its sales outside the United States. Its products are sold at more than 260,000 retail locations in more than 100 countries. SanDisk became a publicly traded company on NASDAQ in November 1995. As of February 2015, its market capitalization was over US$17 billion.

In 2014, Eli Harari was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama for his innovations and contributions to flash memory storage solutions.[2]

History

Eli Harari developed the Floating Gate EEPROM which proved the practicality, reliability and endurance of semiconductor-based data storage. This pioneering work laid the foundation for the flash memory market that significantly impacted the consumer electronics industry, enabling new products across multiple categories.

In 1988, Harari, an Israeli-American launched the company that became SanDisk with former Intel colleague Sanjay Mehrotra (now SanDisk President and Chief Executive Officer), and former Hughes Electronics colleague Jack Yuan.[3]

Early on, SanDisk (then known as SunDisk) recognized that digital cameras would need removable flash memory storage, and computers could become ever more mobile and light and would require a similar storage technology.[4]

Harari offered the removable flash memory card technology to Kodak for inclusion in their cameras in 1988. Kodak offered to fund the development on condition that SanDisk offer a three-year exclusive contract for the “digital film” under the Kodak brand. Harari rejected the offer because he wanted competition in the marketplace to encourage growth of the flash memory industry.[3]

SanDisk founders: Jack Yuan, Eli Harari, and Sanjay Mehrotra (2010).

Description

SanDisk headquarters in Milpitas, California

SanDisk’s flash memory storage products include solid-state drives (SSDs) and caching software for laptop, PC and enterprise applications; memory cards for smartphones and cameras; embedded flash drives for mobile phones and tablets, USB flash drives; and other flash-based products.

The company markets its products directly to businesses, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and consumers, as well as through a new distribution channel that offers SanDisk SSDs to a wider set of business customers including VARs, e-tailers and system integrators.

SanDisk is headquartered in Milpitas, California, US. The company has manufacturing facilities in China, Japan and new manufacturing facility in Malaysia. It also has sales, operations, research and development, and administration in the US, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates. The company has more than 5,500 employees worldwide.

SanDisk's product portfolio includes flash-based enterprise storage; flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state drives for computers. SanDisk is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half its sales outside the United States.[5]

Corporate acquisitions

Core markets

SanDisk flash drive

Flash memory has an extremely small form factor, helping it fit into ultra-slim electronics devices such as tablets, smartphones and thin-and-light laptops. Because flash memory contains no moving mechanical parts, it consumes less power and is considered rugged and more reliable than hard disk drives (HDDs).

Enterprise – The explosive growth and consumption of data in cloud computing and data centers is increasingly requiring network architectures that can enable real-time analytics and low latency, providing fast and reliable access to information. SanDisk serves this market with its enterprise SSDs and enterprise software products.[13]

Computing – Tablets and ultra-thin notebooks carry with them certain requirements from manufacturer and technology suppliers, such as “instant on” functionality, a thin form factor, durability and low-power consumption. Because of these, flash memory has become the main storage technology for these computing devices. SanDisk supplies embedded flash drives and removable memory cards to virtually every major tablet and ultra-thin laptop manufacturer.[14]

Mobile – Flash memory has become an essential component in smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices due to its large capacity storage and “mass market” price points, low power consumption and ruggedness inherent with no moving parts. SanDisk provides embedded flash drives and removable memory cards to almost every major smartphone and tablet maker.[15]

Consumer Electronics – Flash technology is used in memory cards that go into digital cameras, USB storage drives, and portable music and video players. SanDisk creates and sells its own brand of USB flash drives and Sansa line of MP3 audio players.[16]

Key product lines

Solid State Drives (SSDs)

  • SATA SSDs
  • SAS SSDs
  • PCIe SSAs
  • Flash DIMM

Enterprise Software

  • FlashSoft Software

Embedded Storage

  • iNAND Embedded Flash Drives
  • iSSD

Memory Cards

  • SD Cards
  • microSD Cards
  • CompactFlash Cards
  • Memory Stick PRO Duo
  • Card Readers
  • Nintendo Game Cards

Software & Services

  • ExpressCache
  • Cloud Catcher
  • Media Manager
  • Memory Zone
  • SanDisk SecureAccess

Music & Video Players

USB Storage

  • USB Flash Drives

Wireless Memory

  • SanDisk Wireless Flash Drive
  • SanDisk Wireless Media Drive

Patent portfolio

SanDisk currently holds more than 5,000 patents worldwide. The company’s patent portfolio is consistently recognized as one of the strongest in the technology industry. The first patent assigned to SanDisk, claiming a priority of 1989, has around 60 family members, including US5297148A, titled 'Memory card connectable to a computer system'.[17]

Thomson Reuters named SanDisk as one of the “Top 100 Global Innovators” in 2014,[18] 2013,[19] and 2012.[20] IEEE Spectrum ranked SanDisk as having one of the strongest patent portfolios out of 5,000 companies and organizations.[21]

Awards and recognition

SanDisk won the 2013 and 2012 Golden Peacock Global Corporate Social Responsibility Award and Israel's 2012, 2011 and 2010 Maala Award for excellence in a range of corporate social responsibility issues.

In its 2012 report on progress relating to conflict minerals, the Enough Project rated SanDisk the third highest of 24 consumer electronics companies.[22]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "SanDisk Annual Report". SanDisk.
  2. ↑ Eli Harari *73 receives honor from President Obama
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Harris, Scott Duke (2008-07-13). "Mercury News interview: SanDisk CEO helped launch digital revolution". The San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
  4. ↑ "Santa Clara Valley Chapter Meeting: 'Future Directions for Semiconductor Non-Volatile Memory". Santa Clara University: IEEE Electron Devices Society. January 16, 1990.
  5. ↑ "SanDisk website". SanDisk. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  6. ↑ "SanDisk Completes Acquisition of Fusion-io". 2014-07-23. Retrieved 2014-07-23.
  7. ↑ "Sandisk Completes Acquisition of SMART Storage Systems" (Press release). 2013-08-22. Retrieved 2013-08-22.
  8. ↑ "SanDisk Acquires Enterprise Storage Software Maker Schooner Information Technology" (Press release). 2012-06-26. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
  9. ↑ "SanDisk Acquires FlashSoft" (Press release). 2012-02-15. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
  10. ↑ "SanDisk Announces An Agreement To Acquire Pliant Technology" (Press release). 2011-05-16. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
  11. ↑ "SanDisk To Buy msystems". The Street. 2006-07-31. Retrieved 2006-08-21.
  12. ↑ "Matrix Agrees To Acquisition By SanDisk". 2005-10-20. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
  13. ↑ "Enterprise". SanDisk.com. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  14. ↑ "Computing". SanDisk.com. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  15. ↑ "Mobile Industry". SanDisk.com. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  16. ↑ "Consumer electronics". SanDisk.com. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
  17. ↑ "SanDisk First / Basic Patent Flash Storage Pioneers". thinkPat Blog.
  18. ↑ "SanDisk Celebrates Receipt of its 5,000th Patent; Named a ‘Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovator’ for the Fourth Consecutive Year". SanDisk. 2014-11-12. Retrieved 2014-11-12.
  19. ↑ "Top 100 Global innovators 2013". Thompson Reuters. 2013-11-01. Retrieved 2013-11-01.
  20. ↑ "Top 100 Global innovators 2012". Thompson Reuters. 2012-12-04. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
  21. ↑ "The 10 Companies with the Most Patent Power". IEEE Spectrum. 2012-12-09. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
  22. ↑ Lezhnev, Sasha; Alex Hellmuth (Aug 2012). "Taking Conflict Out of Consumer Gadgets: Company Rankings on Conflict Minerals 2012" (PDF). Enough Project. Retrieved 2012-08-17.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to SanDisk.