“For us, 2020 and 2021 were years
of record billing "

We analyze with the Kingston executive the current profile of storage products, the Argentine market and the evolution of prices and their impact on demand.

Por Rodolfo Pollini

What is the first impression that you have, from Kingston, of the Memorias and Storage Products market?
A couple of years ago we see a very large explosion in the storage business, specifically in solid state units, which continue to grow with a fairly accelerated rhythm product of product architecture, which a couple of years ago shows a much more affordable price. For us, the SSD unit has the largest billing weight between our three lines: SSD, RAM and flash memories, which are cards and pendrives.

Asaquible prices must cause a demand turn to more specified products.
Prices are increasingly aggressive and capable of them. Before one was used to seeing that the capabilities of 120 GB or 240 GB were the ones that were sold the most and today they are jumping. Beyond that 240 GB continues to be the best selling, the 120 GB is no longer first, 480 GB has a very important weight, close to 240 GB and 1TB won a more important space.

Is this evolution down prices or do you see it as a trend?
The price of the product has dropped considerably in recent times and the long -term vision of Pricing is downward, because the scale and architecture of technology allows it. We are happy, because although the market is growing a lot in volume and in the first -price product, it also leaves a very large space for more specific products, or niche, such as gaming or corporate.

The demand for greater capacity must go hand in hand with content generation, which by the technology it uses, such as the video, demands greater resources.
The content is increasingly heavy, more and more social networks and communication routes involve the video and more space is needed. While this content ends up in the cloud, the initial phase of the treatment of that content is edition, it is done on a local device and needs storage capacity to work. Everything we see from Workstation or PCs that are assembled for graphic design, mostly have SSD with a higher capacity standard. The average can be 240 GB for a common user, but 480 GB for a graphic design user or a video editor can be
Little and need 1TB or higher.

You mentioned the cloud and in a primary reading one would imagine that it is a threat to storage devices. I imagine that you are going to tell me that it is not, but explain to me why ...
The cloud for many years was seen as a threat more related to the flash business, with the pendrive, which is the storage unit par excellence of the final consumer. The truth is that the last two and a half years of pandemic the sale of flash devices was very beaten by locked people and without the need to transport files. But the good news is now that the levels of sale of Flash memories had an amazing recovery and are those that have the highest recovery or increase rate, continue with very large volumes and have a lot to turn in turnover. It could be believed that no one else buys pendrives or cards, but it is not.

Surely they must have changed the uses or applications of the devices.
The cards are sold a lot for action cameras and drones. The market is requiring differentiated products, as well as to film in 4K and, although to a lesser extent, for professional photography. We are focusing on developing cards for video surveillance. The 16 GB card is no longer the standard; The base is 32 GB and 64 GB and 128 GB are forecast like the two great players for this year and the next one.

You also quotes the gaming, a business and a market that grow incredible. How do you see it impact, in general and specifically from your business?
We have a long career in the Gaming business. Our first product line was RAM and both there and in SSD we have variants of gaming products. Last year we brought our high performance line for RAM and SSD that is Kingston Fury and in the last two years, when the pandemic was a very large accelerator, they were the internal segments with more growth. We have a lot of experience in the sale of Gaming RAM, we are number one in Market Share in Argentina both with Kingston Fury in RAM and SSD.

How is the Argentine market compared to other countries?
One might think that with what we live in the economic context in recent months or years we are delayed, but that same situation makes people invest their weights so that they do not devalue and Argentina is triggered in consumption. For us, 2020 and 2021 were years of record billing, we double it and last year we broke the historical billing record in Argentina since we landed in the country, more than twenty years ago. Argentina is very well located at the level of its results, unthinkable before the pandemic.