Samsung targets sale of 2 m storage devices in 2002

NEW DELHI: On his first visit to India, Samsung Electronics, CEO-Storage, Jin

Kyun Choi, re-affirmed the company's top position in the distribution of Hard

Disk Drives (HDD). With sales of over 1.5 million units of storage devices in

year 2001, Samsung is planning to install another 2 million storage solutions by

end-2002.

Samsung was the first manufacturer to launch the 15Gb/Platter and the

20Gb/Platter technologies in India. Today, though its mainline product is the

40Gb/Platter technology, it is looking at launching the 60Gb/platter technology

very soon.

Samsung claims that it has over 65 per cent market share in the Optical

Drives segment (CD/DVD ROMs/CDRW/COMBO) and is number one in the distribution of

HDD. "Our success has been because of our commitment to the Indian market.

We are entering a market driven model and therefore more of our focus is

customer centric now," said Choi. In HDD and Optical Disk Drives (ODD)

storage components the company is targeting an increase in sales of upto Rs

1,350 crore by 2002.

In its plans for year 2002 the company is looking forward to promoting

7200rpm drives which occupy 35 per cent of the global market. Currently in

India, 7200rpm drives occupy only 5 per cent of the market. The current market

standard in India is still at 5400rpm and with the growing use of PC as an

entertainment device 7200rpm is expected to become a critical component. The

company also intends to take the service of HDDs to another 14 cities by the

year-end. And for ODDs it will increase its presence to over 70 cities from its

current 39.

The need for larger capacity HDDs is driven by 3-D gaming, digital and video

and advanced technologies. The company has witnessed the fastest growth in HDD

for the last 10 years. The company has launched many innovative products like

the Combo (optical) drive and regularly presents the best Time-To-Market (TTM)

in the magnetic storage line.

Worldwide Samsung is planning to ship 25 million units by 2002, an increase

of 5 million units over the last year figure of 20 million units. Samsung's

latest offering for the mobile storage market is Handy-Q.