SanDisk, the world’s largest supplier of flash storage card products, laid out its plans and showed its extended MP3 player line and Cruzer family for the Middle East today at a press conference in Dubai. Attending were the company’s three major distributors, consisting of Grand Stores in the UAE, Ahmed Abdulwahed Trading Company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Future Communications in Kuwait. SanDisk currently covers the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt. SanDisk is represented in this region with over 2,340 store fronts.
Elaborating on the company’s vision, which saw its revenue in the region grow significantly in 2005, Nelson Chan, SanDisk’s Executive Vice President and General Manager, said market analysts are projecting substantial growth in the flash memory market, especially in the realm of music, games, digital imaging, wireless communications, portable workspace, and video. SanDisk has become a well-known consumer electronics company and sells its products at retail in more than 150,000 stores worldwide.
“SanDisk products witnessed a significant growth in the Middle East over the past few years. Together with the distributors in the region, we are now in a situation where we sell products through more than 2,340 store fronts in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries,” said Chan. “We hope to expand on this success in 2006.”
Chan also discussed the rapid growth and future of the mobile entertainment market and detailed his vision on the flash memory market. At the Dubai press conference SanDisk also showed its newest Sansa™ MP3 players that can compete with other hot selling players on the market.
Present at the event were representatives from SanDisk’s three main distributors in the GCC, including Mohamed Abu Issa, Managing Director of Grand Stores in the UAE, Yaser Abdulwahed, Managing Director of Ahmed Abdulwahed Trading Company in Saudi Arabia, and Salah Alawadi, Chairman of Future Communication in Kuwait. Ed Moro, Managing Director SanDisk EMEA, and Tareq Husseini, SanDisk’s Middle East and Africa Sales Manager, also were present.
“2006 will bring more innovations from SanDisk, as recently seen at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month where we launched three exciting products: the Sansa™ e200 MP3 player with a large color screen and 6-gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity, Cruzer Crossfire™ a gaming-oriented USB smart drive to serve console and PC video gamers, and advanced Cruzer® Micro and Cruzer Titanium USB flash drives,” said Husseini. “These exciting products will be shipped to the region in April and we expect them to receive strong market demand.”
Grand Stores is the largest retailer in the UAE with twelve luxury retail show rooms and supplies leading retailers such as the Dubai Duty Free, Plug-ins, Carrefour, Compume, Jacky's, and Sharaf DG.
Ahmed Abdulwahed operates 35 consumer electronic retail stores and supplies Carrefour, Radio Shack, Compume, and Extra in Saudi Arabia, as well as regional distributors and resellers in Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Future Communication sells SanDisk products through 22 showrooms and retailers, including Virgin Megastores and Eureka in Kuwait, and distributes products to telecommunication operators such as MTC Vodafone and Wataniya.
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.
