Dr. Harari: During the course of this interview, I may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the company. Actual events or results could, of course, differ materially. I refer you to the documents the company files from time to time with the SEC, specifically the company's most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q. These documents contain and identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward- looking statements we make in this interview. Now, back to telling you about SanDisk. We are going to celebrate our 15th birthday anniversary on June 1. We were founded on June 1st, 1988. The mission of the company was to develop new technology in flash memory and storage applications and to enable new markets in consumer electronics, mobile computing, as well as industrial and telecommunications. This is what we have been doing for the last 15 years. So we have not strayed from our original vision and mission to create and be a market leader in those markets.
TWST: How would you characterize the condition of your markets
currently, what impact has the soft economy had, and what are the
key growth drivers?
Dr. Harari: The products that SanDisk has developed, in fact
pioneered, are flash cards that are used to replace film in
digital cameras, to replace tape in music players, to replace
disk drives in PDAs and now to greatly enhance the functionality
of multimedia cell phones. These markets have taken the last 15
years really to develop and are now getting to the stage where
they are accelerating. The market acceptance is growing and that
is playing very much to our strengths. We're very well positioned
as the market leader for the supply of these flash cards. The
market for digital consumer electronics in advanced
camera/multimedia cell phones is actually accelerating, as is the
growth in digital cameras. Last year, there were about 26
million digital cameras sold worldwide, exceeding the number of
analog cameras for the first time. This year, the number of
digital cameras sold is projected to be in excess of 35 million,
and we think it could be higher. No matter what model camera you
use, whether it is a Canon, Kodak, Nikon or a Sony, you would
most likely be able to use a SanDisk flash card either supplied
by us to these OEMs under their label ' for example, a Canon
label ' or sold by us in retail through more than 50,000 stores
worldwide under our brand name. In the consumer electronic space,
our target markets are relatively young and growing rapidly.
These markets seem to be somewhat less sensitive to the current
recessionary trends in the economy. We are basically seeing
strong growth in demand from consumers. The end of the war in
Iraq has been good from the point of view that people now have
one less thing to worry about and the outlook for the rest of the
year is currently quite favorable.
Tickers included in this excerpt: SNDK
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