SanDisk Corp to distribute prods in 2,000 stores in India by yr end

New Delhi, Oct 4 (UNI) SanDisk Corporation, largest supplier of flash storage cards, today said it will distribute its products through 2,000 outlets all over India by the end of this year, in partnership with Ingram Micro and Rashi Peripherals, the country's largest IT distributors.

The number of stores would go up to more than 14,000 by the end of 2007.

In addition, the company also announced the launch of its new products including V-Mate video memory card recorder, Sansa C200 series and e200 series MP3 player for the Indian market initially in 12 major cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and others. 28 more cities will be added later by the end of this year.

''We see great potential for growth in consumer electronics products, especially mobile phones, digital cameras and computer accessories,'' SanDisk President and Chief Operating Officer Sanjay Mehrotra told reporters here.

India's emergence as a technology leader and its rising per-capita income are creating opportunities for us in these categories, he added.

The company's revenues stood at 2.5 billion dollars in 2005 and is projected to touch 3 billion dollars by the end of next fiscal, said Mr Mehrotra adding that 70 per cent of the revenue is being garnered through their retail outlets.

The Indian mobile market is growing at a fast rate and is expected to touch 400-500 million units by 2008. In this direction, talks are on with major mobile manufacturers in the country to use our flash memory cards, Mr Mehrotra said.

''Our success developing memory card solutions with the leading handset manufacturers, combined with India's large and growing base of mobile phone users makes our entry into India well timed,'' said company's Senior Vice President of worldwide sales Greg Rhine.

SanDisk has been building its presence in India with the opening of a flash memory design centre in Bangalore earlier this year working on projects involving NAND memory and future ASIC controllers.

Ingram Micro has 42 distribution centers in 28 Indian states, with more than 70 vendors serving 12,000 retail customers and would distribute the full line of SanDisk flash memory cards.

Rashi Peripherals Pvt Ltd plans to concentrate on the consumer electronics and compuetr IT channels distributing SanDisk Sansa MP3 digital media players and USB flash drives.

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