Kingston Technology Co., the world’s biggest maker of memory products, is betting on consumers’ appetites to upgrade slow and aging computers instead of buying new ones.
This week, the Fountain Valley-based company is set to launch upgrade kits with solid state drives,so-called because they lack moving parts,geared toward consumers.
Solid state drives made of flash memory are more durable, save power and are faster at some tasks than traditional disk drives.
In computers, they can make booting up and shutting down speedier and make software and e-mail programs run faster.
“To be able to move those applications and the operating system to a solid state drive is almost like getting a new system,” said Ariel Perez, solid state drive business manager for Kingston. “It will have a very snappy performance.”
Kingston is selling solid state drives in two capacities,64 and 128 gigabytes,for both notebook and desktop computers.
The drives are bundled with special cloning software, cables, computer parts and instructions that allow consumers to copy their files and applications from the disk drive and save them on the solid state drive.
In a notebook, the solid state drive replaces the disk drive altogether.
In a desktop, the operating system and applications will run off the solid state drive, but the disk drive remains to store music, photos, movies and data files.
Kingston’s looking to appeal to consumers and small businesses that can’t afford new computers this year but might opt for do-it-yourself upgrade kits instead.
“We see that both consumer and corporate spending is down,” Perez said. “These drives allow consumers and businesses to make the most of their existing hardware investments. They don’t have to go invest in new machines if they have computers that are maybe a few years old. It kind of works well even for the tough times we are in.”
There’s one caveat, though,the computer in need of an upgrade can’t be too old.
It must have the modern storage interface known as “serial advanced technology attachment,” or SATA, to work with a solid state drive.
Generally mid-range computers that are less than three or four years old will have the correct technology. But it all depends on the manufacturer.
Solid state drives have captured a lot of attention lately as they quickly are replacing hard drives in high-end data storage networks, notebook computers and other industry-specific devices that can’t break down.
A handful of local companies make solid state drives for corporations and the military. Santa Ana’s STEC Inc. and Lake Forest’s Western Digital Corp. both are emerging players.
The drives are built into servers and data storage networking devices made by the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co., EMC Corp. and IBM Corp., among others.
Last year, Kingston teamed up with Intel Corp. to sell solid state drives into the corporate market.
Charging into an unproven market is a strategy shift for privately held Kingston, the leading maker of memory modules for computers.
Kingston traditionally has taken a “wait and see” approach to new products.
It waited years to get into flash memory cards for consumer electronics, which now make up about a quarter of Kingston’s $4 billion in yearly sales.
Kingston’s main business is buying memory chips and assembling them onto circuit boards that boost the performance of computers.
“What we’ve always been good at is the upgrade market,starting with memory and moving to flash products,” Perez said. “This is an opportunity to jump in and play to our strengths in a market that knows and trusts Kingston.”
Industry Reception
Size and industry pull could prove to be advantages for Kingston. That was the case with flash memory cards for cell phones, digital cameras and music players, where Kingston was years late but caught up quickly.
For most flash products sold to consumers, Kingston still trails No. 1 Milpitas-based SanDisk Corp.
Last year, Kingston surpassed SanDisk in worldwide sales of thumb drives, portable flash drives that plug into a PC’s universal serial bus ports, according to data from El Segundo-based market tracker iSuppli Corp.
Kingston is hoping to encourage consumers’ adoption of solid state drives, Perez said.
“Until now we’ve only seen a lot of techy consumers and guys who are used to tinkering with their PCs go after solid state drives as upgrades,” he said. “Our goal is to start pushing mass adoption of the technology.”
Adoption has been slow because the price of flash memory chips that make up solid state drives has been a bit too steep.
“Prices have been such that it hasn’t really made its way down to the mass market yet,” Perez said. “We are aiming for people who have some knowledge of the drives but perhaps because of the higher prices and the actual work involved to do it yourself haven’t taken the leap yet.”
Kingston is aiming to offer the upgrade kits for cheaper than what competitors are selling just the drives by themselves.
The 64 gigabyte kit will go for around $150 and the 128 gigabyte kit will go for around $260.
Buying the cloning software separately would run about $50.
“The price point on these is definitely aggressive,” Perez said. “It’s going to be better than just about all of the standalone drives out there today,”
The kits will initially be sold at online stores and later will roll out on retail shelves, including at Fry’s Electronics Inc.’s stores.
