“One does not usually think of flash-memory card maker SanDisk as a leader in fashion technology. But the Sunnyvale-based company has quietly become the No. 2 seller in the United States of the hottest tech trend — digital music players,” John Boudreau reports for The San Jose Mercury News. “SanDisk won’t be rolling out big TV campaigns featuring silhouetted dancers. And the company’s digital music players, while sleek, have yet to inspire breathless prose from reviewers. ‘We want to be a strong No. 2 in the MP3 space,’ said Eric Bone, SanDisk’s director of consumer product marketing.”
“SanDisk, a leader in the market of USB flash drives — those little storage devices small enough to hook onto your key chain — and flash memory cards, has a strong presence in retailers across the country,” Boudreau reports. “The company reported a record $2.3 billion in revenues for 2005, and sold a million digital music players during the recent holiday quarter. Apple, on the other hand, registered a whopping 14 million iPod sales during the holiday period. Still, SanDisk’s sales were an impressive showing for the company, which entered the digital music player market in November 2004. ‘We already have the channels. We have the brand,” SanDisk Chief Executive Eli Harari said. ‘We are not Apple. We are not an iPod. But we have a highly respected brand.'”
SanDisk’s strategy is to offer digital music devices to those ‘beyond the middle class,’ Harari said. ‘Our passion is to bring the cost of these devices down. It’s basically about creating new markets in which people can afford a product.’ SanDisk’s current Sansa music players range in price from $79 to $149 with a disk capacity from 256 megabytes to 2 gigabytes, though promotions can cut the price of its most basic model to as low as $40. Apple announced Tuesday a new 1 GB iPod nano that will cost $149, and said it is lowering the price of its iPod shuffle to $69 for the 512-megabyte model and $99 for the 1 GB version,” Boudreau reports. “Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research, thinks being a solid No. 2 in the digital music player business will be hard to sustain. ‘Apple walloped everybody last quarter,’ Wu said. And the new, lower priced iPods, ‘will make life harder for non-Apple vendors. If I were the competitors, I would be worried.’ SanDisk is realistic: It knows that, at least for now, the digital music world sways to Apple’s beat. ‘There are people who, no matter what, will buy an iPod,’ Bone said. ‘All I want is for people to think there is an alternative.'”
Full article here.
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Related article:
Apple, SanDisk shares hit new highs – January 06, 2006
Yawn!
Harari sounds like a reasonable enough guy. None of the, we’ll bury you, or we declare war on you, stuff. Just an honest, “We aren’t Apple, we aren’t the iPod. . .” but we’re trying.
Too bad he’ll be buried soon enough.
Okay, there’s an alternative. Now on with the show!
I think SanDisk is working the right problem from their viewpoint. I have a good price point to work from and their have good customer relationtions. They are somebody to watch.
They are not try to be first, but they are trying to make second or third profitible.
– Brian
I just checked their site, it dosn’t mention Mac compatability anywhere. Still, I assume you can still plug this (I’m talking about the Sansa e200) into a Mac and it will pop up like a removeable HD and you can just drag music onto it.
Where is our gd friend, Sim Wrong Who?
Haven’t heard anything from him yet….
the sandisk offerings at not nearly as god-awful as the other stuff around. their devices actually look pretty stylish as well. and it’s nice to hear their realistic POV. they are good competition for apple, and competition is good for us.
With the shuffle now at $69, I wonder if they will lower their prices to match?
He does seen like a reasonable guy. With its respected name in the digital camera market and their pre-existing sales channels, I see them surviving long enough to carve out a market for themselves, assuming their players are designed well.
I agree, its nice to have a decent honest, respectable and realistic competitor in the market who make limited but good products. I think their strategy is the correct one and with their base of flash players its sustainable and no burden on their primary skills. Creative on the other hand … well usually the bigger the mouth the smaller the brain and they, especially their boss do nothing to disturb that perception.
So much for Creative’s “war” eh? SanDisk didn’t even enter the market until 15 months ago and they’ve already blown past them without even paying for any advertising. lol
I actually saw a girl in the elevator at work the other day with a SanDisk player. It was pretty small and white with white earphones. I’d never seen one before.
Being a big time flash memory maker SanDisk has a source for the one component that the other also rans and no longer rans lack. They will be hard to actually kill off.
SanDisk is a worthy and honourable competitor. I’m glad they took second place and hope they are successful at what they do. This is just one more slap in the face for Creative and their arrogant CEO. I look forward to Creative going out of business or at least losing their position in third place to other more worthy competitors who are still willing to innovate rather than rip-off. Someone should put a gag on that loudmouth Sim Wong Hoo. Better yet. He should get fired for his poor leadership style and failed strategy.
Hey, lets go to war with Apple! Um, lets not and stay in business…
i was out at a wrestling tournament at the local high school. there were dozens of sandisk mp3 players and kids were standing around admiring ’em.
not a cool as ipod’s of course. but at least in sw washington state school’s, word of mouth is leading sandisk to a market.
I hope SanDisk continues to do well — just not at the expense of iPod sales. We need a good alternative around to fend of claims of monopoly.
I agree with others that they seem smart about their approach. With over 2 billion for the holiday quarter they are no small company. They are diversified well enough to be able to offer low-margain MP3 products and survive.
finally bought an iPod shuffle 1 gig for C$119 yesterday, after price drop. 512 is C$89. Not much room for lower priced competitors. I was waiting for a more reasonable price. Shuffles are going to fly off the shelves at lower price points.
Only problem: buds get lost inside a cow’s ears. And lanyard is too small for a cow’s neck. Somebody should take the bull by the horns and open up this market to the whole herd.
Hmmmm, I wonder if SanDisk will become a cult because they are number 2.
Being number 2 and a cult somehow reminds me a particular computer company.
MW = somewhat
Hey, someone has to be #2.
iDon’t: No the closest thing there is to a “cult anti-iPod” is iRiver. For as long as they can remain in business, that is.
I don’t know what to make of SanDisk. On the one hand, their CEO clearly is not an asshole, and I appreciate that. On the other, their products still look too much like iPod ripoffs for my taste.