Kingston Technology announced that it closed one of the best fiscal years in history in Latin America. Argentina surpassed its historical record that dated back to 2010, and closed 2021 with 30% more sales than in 2020. A key point in terms of sales are solid state drives (SSD), and the maturation process of this product continued its course during 2021.

Jean-Pierre Cecillon, Regional Director for South America at Kingston, highlights the double-digit growth in Chile and Colombia, countries where the manufacturer managed to grow for the fourth consecutive year: "As is known, the SSD family is already the largest for us in terms of turnover and in 2021 its domain was further expanded. In terms of volumes, 2021 was clearly superior to 2020 with more constant product availability. We also see a natural trend of increasing capacity, and in addition, to the rapid growth and adoption of NVMe technology. Thus, 480GB units already represent 32% of consumption in Latin America for the company and the NVMe segment already reaches 10% of shipments.

The executive explains that, last year, Kingston made a strong commitment to continue strengthening its link with the gaming sector. The highlight was the presentation of its Kingston Fury line: "Without a doubt, the main campaign and marketing focus in 2021 was the launch of our new brand of memories for gamers, overclockers and enthusiasts. Since the announcement of the sale of the peripheral division last February, we focused on creating a new brand that could be on the market as soon as possible, and in July we announced the arrival of Kingston Fury."

Cecillon specifies that "the focus was to show that the company remains in the gamer segment, maintaining the same level of services and the legendary quality of the products. Due to the acceptance of the channel in the various countries, the transition was even smoother than we expected and we see that users understood the message of continuity and the adoption of the new brand was done naturally."

Sustained growth

Without a doubt, the sustained growth in the first half of the year positively marked all of Kingston's numbers. The IT sector was an undisputed winner since the start of the pandemic, despite the logistics problems that continued to affect production chains and component shortages, which in the case of the company were much more limited than last year.

"In the second half, with the reopening of a majority of countries towards freedom of movement, meetings and massive social activities, we have noticed in several markets a clear change in consumer priorities that undoubtedly modified the pace of business. Thus, we were able to see that our only product line that had been hit hard by the pandemic (that of flash products such as USB and cards) seems to have found a point of resistance in the decline. Finally, in several countries, the sale of USBs and cards is beginning to react, in parallel with the return to the classes, travel, outdoor activities,” said Kingston's Regional Director for South America.

From the gamer world we come and there we go

In reference to the new line and the enthusiasm that the brand showed for the gamer segment, Cecillon points out that "Kingston has been part of this market since 2002, when it established its specialized division for gaming, and the products focused on high-performance RAM memory modules. Launching the new brand this year shows that the commitment is maintained and that we will continue to bet on it, that the Kingston Fury line will continue to expand." In fact, the company recently launched the Kingston Fury Renegade SSD, a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive that starts at 500GB and goes up to 4TB, and is the first step in diversifying the product line.

Trends for 2022

This year brings several challenges to a global economy hit by the pandemic problem that will complete two years in March. "In contexts like these, our products represent a great help for end users, be they companies or individuals. If we add to this panorama the fact that many systems sold in the 2020/21 period had an insufficient basic configuration in both RAM memory and storage performance, we have a very favorable outlook again for memory and SSD upgrades," explained the executive.

One of the first developments for 2022 will be the increase in availability of DDR5 products, although this technology is not expected to become dominant this year, DDR4 will still be important in the industry. Specifically, the Kingston Fury line will be the one with the greatest number of launches, both in terms of product capacity and speed of the modules and renewal of the “heat spreaders”.

In the flash line, Kingston's idea is to reinforce the medium and high range of products and there will be several new developments in the USB line, with dual products and type C connectors. For SSDs, the strategy will continue to rely on entry-level products with very aggressive prices to maintain the success of the NV1 product, an entry-level NVMe that had fantastic market penetration. The highest performance products will also have their launches, for servers and workstations.

TyN Magazine