Posted on Monday, February 19 2007 @ 3:11 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
SanDisk
announced a big price cut on flash memory. Unfortunately the company will need to fire 250 employees to finance the move, and it will also freeze hiring, freeze all salaries and cut VP salaries with 10%, EVP salaries with 15% and the CEO's salary with 20%.
Your next flash memory card or USB stick may carry a whole different price than a comparable product did one or two months ago. Sandisk today said that NAND component pricing has declined buy about 50% in the past two months alone, mainly due to excess supply as well as weak Q1 demand. As a result, the company saw its retail and OEM pricing fall much faster than the company had previously anticipated and is no forced to cut prices in order to be able to keep its market shares.
The firm announced that many products will see cuts in the range of 30-40% below Q4 levels. Sandisk believes that there will be a strong pickup in demand in the second half of the year, but the company has virtually no visibility when there will be a relief in competitive pressure.
