| BANGALORE, INDIA, FEBRUARY 7, 2006 – SanDisk®
Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today announced the opening of SanDisk India
Device Design Center Pvt. Ltd. in the country's technology hub of
Bangalore, where engineers will work on the core elements of the company's
flash memory products. The announcement was made at a press conference
in Bangalore that was attended by Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk chief operating
officer, and other company officials.
"India is a logical place for us to expand our global network
of research and development centers because of the great talent
pool here and because of our existing relationships with companies
that support us in hardware, firmware and software testing,"
said Mehrotra, who is also SanDisk's co-founder.
India, he added, is expected to become a major market for SanDisk
products as a result of booming consumer demand for mobile phones
and MP3 audio players. "We need to have a solid presence to
promote our brand and to leverage the opportunities for growth in
the retail sector," he said. "As we increase our production
of flash memory this year, we intend to focus more attention on
India, including the addition of more distributors and storefronts."
The SanDisk India Design Center will initially concentrate on projects
involving NAND memory – the heart of SanDisk's flash memory
cards, USB drives and MP3 players. Later, the team will be expanded
to include development work on ASIC controllers, which are the gatekeepers
for data in flash memory cells.
Although the India Design Center is SanDisk's first stand-alone
facility in India, the company already has engineers assigned to
several projects at two SanDisk technology partners in India, Wipro
and RelQ. Wipro is the world's largest third party R&D services
provider, offering design engineering, product lifecycle management
and product realization. RelQ is an independent software testing
and validation company. Both have major operations in Bangalore.
In total, SanDisk currently has approximately 60 engineers among
the three facilities.
Mehrotra noted that SanDisk's rapid growth as the leading supplier
of flash memory cards requires global strategies in design and manufacturing.
In addition to its extensive R & D activities in Silicon Valley,
California, SanDisk has research facilities in Israel, Japan and
Scotland. And the company has teams of process/device/design engineers
located at the semiconductor fabrication plants that are operated
in partnership with Toshiba in Japan.
Ceremonies inaugurating the Design Center were also attended by
Yoram Cedar, SanDisk's executive vice president of handset business
and corporate engineering; Tom Baker, vice president of human resources;
and Simon Stolero, vice president of Israel operations.
SanDisk is the original inventor of flash storage cards and is
the world's largest supplier of flash data storage card products,
using its patented, high-density flash memory and controller technology.
SanDisk is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA and has operations worldwide,
with more than half its sales outside the U.S
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