Kingston Technology Co., a Fountain Valley-based maker of memory products for computers and consumer electronics, reported a small rise in 2009 sales after a year of rebounding prices for memory chips and improving demand.
Early this month, the company reported 2009 sales of $4.1 billion, roughly flat from the $4 billion in sales for 2008.
Privately held Kingston has about 800 workers here. It doesn’t disclose profits.
The company said the small revenue gain was due to better prices for memory chips and stronger demand for computer products from corporations and consumers.
Kingston buys memory chips and assembles them into modules and cards for computers and consumer electronics.
“The memory market saw some financial recovery last year and Kingston was able to benefit from the general rise in (memory chip) pricing,” cofounder and President John Tu said.
Tu also attributed some of the gain to Kingston’s entrance into the market for solid state drives, which use flash memory chips and have no moving parts.
During the third quarter, average prices for dynamic random access memory, the most common type of memory chip, jumped 21% from the second quarter, according to data from El Segundo-based market tracker iSuppli Corp.
The market “is emerging from what has been a long and painful slump,” said Mike Howard, a senior analyst at iSuppli.
A year ago, Kingston got squeezed as the market saw a steep drop in prices for memory chips.
Chips from Asian, European and U.S. suppliers are the building blocks for memory modules—circuit boards loaded with memory chips that speed the performance of computers and consumer electronics.
Falling prices crimp profits and lower the value of the inventory of chips bought earlier.
“A year ago at this time, we were bracing for a bad year,” said David Sun, cofounder and operations chief.
Last year marked Kingston’s second-highest yearly sales record. In 2007 it saw $4.5 billion in sales.
‘StarCraft’ Release
Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc., part of Vivendi SA’s Activision Blizzard Inc., is going into testing for a long-awaited online game.
In August, Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard said that “StarCraft II,” which was expected to drop in late 2009, would be delayed until the first half of this year.
“StarCraft II” is what’s known by industry insiders as a “real-time strategy game” in which three groups face off in a fictional world.
It went into development in 2003 and was announced in 2007. “StarCraft II” is a follow-up to Blizzard’s original “StarCraft,” which came out in 1998.
Blizzard has laid out “StarCraft II” as a trilogy, the first of which is “Wings of Liberty.” The other working titles are “Heart of the Swarm” and “Legacy of the Void.”
Blizzard hasn’t given an official release date for the game but said it expects the game to ship in the first half of the year.
Blizzard Chief Executive Mike Morhaime said in a conference call with analysts a few weeks ago that the company is slated to begin testing out the game in multiple countries among a carefully selected group of players.
“The full game is still on track for an international release at some point in the middle of this year,” Morhaime said. “We expect a tremendous response from our players and we’re eager to begin this phase of development as we enter the final stretch before release.”
2010 is set to be a big year for Blizzard, the world’s biggest maker of online games and Orange County’s biggest software maker.
This will be the first time in a dozen years that Blizzard is slated to ship two major products in the same year—“StarCraft II” and the next “World of Warcraft” expansion pack, dubbed “Cataclysm.”
WebVisible Funding
Irvine-based WebVisible Inc., an online advertising search company for small businesses, landed $20 million in a round of venture funding, the company said.
The recent round was lead by Chicago-based Adams Street Partners LLC and Palo Alto’s Focus Ventures, WebVisible said.
Previous investors Palo Alto-based Sutter Hill Ventures and Redpoint Ventures of Menlo Park also participated, it said.
WebVisible’s software helps businesses buy and target online advertisements. It’s raised an estimated $37 million to date.
WebVisible’s services target smaller businesses—from those that are a one-person shop to companies with 250 workers.
Its software, called Geneva, automates the process of buying online advertising.
Instead of business owners sorting through all the online ad options and processes, WebVisible’s software asks for some simple information and places online ads for a company.
