Sandisk expects increased demand for its mobile storage products as a result of continued growth in the smartphone, MIDs and notebooks sectors.
The flash memory provider said demand for its mobile solutions was actually increasing – as were prices.
Eli Harari, Sandisk’s CEO, speaking in its first quarter earnings this week, said he expected demand for NAND to continue to grow particularly for mobile and portable computing platforms.
He said this would help absorb the industry supply growth projected for second half of 2009 and ensure price stability.
Pointing to the changes currently taking place in the mobile market, he compared them to those experienced by the Internet in its early days.
He said these would also have important implications for Sandisk’s mobile storage business.
Apple’s iPhone and its App Store, RIM’s Blackberry Market, the adoption of Android by smartphone makers, as well as Nokia and Microsoft’s plans were all mentioned as playing a role in fuelling the demand for flash memory.
"The opportunity for us is these devices will have to be content with wireless bandwidth and coverage limitations, making off-line, local caching of increased amount of data, central to devices’ usability," he said.
"Paradoxically, the promise of always-connected devices in cloud computing is resulting in the ever greater need for local storage on the devices themselves."
Harai said Sandisk was seeing increasing demand from "major players" in the mobile ecosystem for its mobile storage solutions, including Mobile Card, embedded iNAND and solid state drives for notebook PC’s.
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