Kingston Technology Co.’s charge into memory for consumer electronics is paying off, even if it wasn’t a popular idea at first.
Since the Fountain Valley-based company came out with flash memory for digital cameras and other gadgets in 2003, sales of the products have at least doubled every year, said Mark Leathem, who heads up marketing and business development for flash.
“There were a lot of naysayers as to whether we should move into those markets, and I was one of those,” Leathem said. “I thought it was a niche market that didn’t have any long-term business potential for us.”
Kingston isn’t saying, but flash memory now could be a third of its $3 billion in yearly sales.
The company is the king of traditional memory boards for computers and networking gear known as dynamic random access memory, or DRAM. It claims 17% of the market.
The No. 2 player, Fremont-based Smart Modular Technologies Inc., gets just 5.5%, according to market tracker iSuppli Inc. in El Segundo.
For more on this story, see the May 15 edition of the Business Journal.
