Kingston Technology Corporation today announced that in 2008, it achieved a record 41-percent increase in total memory units shipped over 2007 volume. Despite oversupply, average selling price erosion and a weakened global economy contributing to a down year in the memory industry, Kingston gained significant market share in both DRAM and Flash memory. The companys global sales totaled $4.0 billion U.S., a $500 million decrease from record-setting revenues in 2007. The press release is worth a read as are David Sun's comments on the state of the industry. Even with the slowing economy Mr. Sun states that things will work out fine and I'd have to agree with him on that. It's great to see an owner of a huge company say that everything is going to be okay. If only our President and other leaders would deliver messages with the same forward looking comments.

We have always focused on improving efficiency but weve had to sharpen that focus during this tough time, said David Sun, co-founder, Kingston. The storm is not over yet, but we will be alright moving ahead. Since our employees are as determined as John and I, and we have the continued support of our partners, vendors and customers, we know things will work out just fine.

With data theft seeming to be increasing in frequency (read this and this), a California legislator has introduced a bill that would make companies report more information to people affected by the breaches.State Sen. Joe Simitian’s bill would require companies involved to report to the state attorney general any data breach that affected more than 500 California residents. The proposed law also details what the companies have to tell their customers about the breaches.He spoke at the University of California

If market researcher Informa Telecoms & Media is correct, more people are going to be reaching for an Android-powered device than an iPhone by 2012. Considering there is only one Android device currently on the market—the G1, which launched in September—the new platform must make huge strides to achieve this widespread market penetration. We expect to see the second Android handset called the Magic this spring. Both the G1 and the Magic are manufactured by HTC. Other Android devices have been rumored, but

MSI had no shortage of new products debut at CeBIT this past week, and in an effort to better bring into focus its comprehensive notebook line, the company has released an all encompassing release that highlights its professional G (Gaming) and multimedia E (Entertainment) families.Among the six major MSI notebook product lines, the G and E lines cater to the power-hungry individuals who want an emphasis on superior processing speed, display effects and video resolution. The G Series in particular is honed to

Seagate and AMD Unveil World’s First Demonstration of Serial ATA 6Gigabit/Second Technology for High-Speed PC Applications Seagate, teaming with microprocessor manufacturing leader Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) at the Everything Channel Xchange Conference in New Orleans this week, today unveiled the world’s first public demonstration of next-generation high-speed data transfer – Serial ATA 6Gigabit/second – for bandwidth-hungry desktop and laptop PC applications including gaming, streaming video and graphics

What would you do if Samsung gave you only 24-hours of hands-on time with a stack of solid-state drive (SSD) engineering samples to do some viral marketing with? For you this is surely just an academic question, but for Paul Curry of The Viral Factory in London, it was a very real challenge. And he took the challenge to the limits of where only the truly geekiest would go: he custom-built an 8-core, dual-RAID, Windows Vista system, utilizing 24 256MB MLC SSDs, for a total of 6TB of storage. Curry’s system used

These technology birthdays are always up for debate — are we basing birthdays on the first prototype? The first shipping product? The first patent application? What? There’s also no governmental agency to decide upon these highly important matters, so unfortunately, we’re at the mercy of the party planners.On the plus side, this chaos usually leads to more celebrations than usual, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing here. If you’ll recall, we actually celebrated the 25th birthday of the Compact Disc in 2007,

For Facebook users who might have noticed that some previously-uploaded photos were mysteriously missing from their Facebook pages, Facebook wants you to know that it is aware of the problem, it is fixing the problem right now, and perhaps most importantly: “Don’t worry: Your photos are safe.” Apparently, while Facebook engineers were performing a “routine software upgrade” this last Friday night, several hard drives that store user photos experienced “simultaneous hardware failures.” The Facebook engineers

The spinoff of Advanced Micro Devices' chip production into a joint venture with the Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) marks one of the more interesting technology shifts in recent years–and one that could have a significant effect on processor pricing and the competitive landscape over the next decade.

By opening its fab to outside business–basically turning the fab into a commercial foundry–AMD and its partner can potentially generate a reasonable profit. That also takes one of the major cost centers out of AMD's business, leaving it with the processor design and sales business and a much lower cost model. And with the deep pockets of its U.A.E. partner, not to mention strong business connections across northern Africa, AMD could eke out a comfortable living for years to come. At the very least, the competitive stakes with rival Intel will be raised, and that generally benefits consumers of technology both in cost and in technological advancement. Even Intel has been pushing more of its processor production to commercial foundries over the past several years, driven by the high cost of building a new fab.

Downstream memory specialists have benefited from positive NAND flash spot prices, and more stable DRAM pricing. Taiwan's memory-module suppliers A-Data Technology and Transcend Information both expect their financial performance to improve substantially in the first quarter of 2009, compared to a weak fourth quarter last year.

The sales ratio of Transcend's strategic products grew to 19.67% last month, according to the company. Driven by another shipment record for its portable hard drives, Transcend shipped a total of 368,000 strategic products in February, compared to 350,000 units with a 15.9% contribution recorded for the previous month. As for memory modules, shipments of its NAND flash modules rose 52% on year to 6.27 million units in February, whereas the DRAM-module segment dropped 11% to 880,000 units.