Fountain Valley-based Kingston Technology Inc. has packed the memory capacity of a server into a USB flash drive that can fit in your pocket.
The breakthrough 1-terabyte flash drive, a first for the industry, generated plenty of hoopla this month at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, upstaging thousands of other products launched at the world’s largest tech fest.
The new version of the HyperX Predator, slated for release this quarter, will dent the pocket book.
Its predecessor, the DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0, which features 512 gigabits of memory and faster transfer rates, costs about $850. The 1-terabyte drive is expected to cost about $2,000.
“The price point right now doesn’t make sense for a lot of people, but you have to start at some spot to get it down to a point where we can sell that every day,” Andrew Ewing, Kingston’s Flash Memory USB business manager, said during a demo at the company’s ballroom at Caesars Palace Las Vegas Hotel & Casino for CES.
Kingston is the world’s largest memory-products maker for computers and consumer electronics, with an estimated $5.8 billion in annual sales. The company believes a niche market exists for the 1-terabyte drive, which weighs a few ounces, is about as thick as a candy bar, and as long as a stick of bubble gum.
New Era
The proliferation of streaming video—fueled by the popularity of YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and other content-sharing sites and coupled with the staying power of iTunes and multitask smart phones—has ushered in a new era of user-generated content.
The crush of data requires ever-more storage and the sort of mobility that flash drives offer—which has become an increasingly important factor for consumers using tablets and smart phones.
The cost of the 1-terabyte flash drive has Kingston, a longtime leader in the flash-drive segment, initially targeting content creators, photographers, architects and small businesses.
“It’s partially to be innovative, but there’s also a realistic standpoint,” Ewing said. “People now have a terabyte worth of data that they need to store.”
A terabyte of data is extremely large, comparable to a server’s memory. To provide some perspective, this week’s edition of the Business Journal in compressed PDF form is only about 1 gigabit.
It would take nearly 20 years of storing our weekly edition on Kingston’s latest flash drive to reach its capacity.
Kingston took about a year to develop the product and hit some stumbling blocks along the way. One involved NAND, a component in memory cards, flash drives, cameras, laptops and other products for general storage and data transfer.
It took Kingston’s NAND suppliers more than a month to develop a wafer that could be stacked eight high, the required chip configuration to produce that much storage.
It took another six months to test its reliability and bring it to scale.
“We’re a little behind schedule, but we’ll be able to ship later this quarter,” Ewing said.
Kingston doesn’t make its own components. It sources them from Asian suppliers and primarily assembles its products in its sprawling manufacturing plants in China and Taiwan.
Last year the Business Journal reported Kingston paid $4.1 million for a 21% stake in Panram International Corp., which makes DRAM chips, the most common type of memory used in computers, and Kingston’s biggest source of revenue.
Earlier in the year it purchased some 274 million shares of Rexchip Electronics Corp. from Powertech Technology Corp. for an estimated $128 million.
Media reports pegged Kingston as Rexchip’s largest shareholder, although its total stake is unknown.
Both buys are expected to position Kingston with a steady supply of DRAM chips in the years to come as demand surges for cloud and PC storage.
Kingston’s operations in Fountain Valley typically handles smaller orders that need to be turned around quickly.
Designer
The company hired renowned products designer Arman Emami to develop the concept and style of the 1-terabyte drive. Kingston contracted Emami in the past to design its DataTraveler SE9 USB flash drive, which features a stylish metal casing with a large key chain ring.
Emami, the founder of the Berlin design studio Emamidesign, gained accolades in 2009 with his “USB clip,” cleverly designed in the shape of a paper clip.
His sleek, metallic stylings can be seen in other designs, which range from faucets and milk frothers to flying indoor camera and recording devices and trendy collapsible cans.