As of March 2019,[update] Western Digital was the fourth-largest manufacturer of flash memory having declined from third-largest in 2014.[1]
History
SanDisk founders: Jack Yuan, Eli Harari, and Sanjay Mehrotra (2010)SanDisk Extreme Portable SSDA SanDisk Ultra Flair USB drive from 2020, attached with an HP Laptop
SanDisk was founded in 1988 by Eli Harari, Sanjay Mehrotra, and Jack Yuan, incorporated at the time as SunDisk.[2] SanDisk co-founder Eli Harari developed the Floating Gate EEPROM which proved the practicality, reliability and endurance of semiconductor-based data storage.[3]
In 1991 SanDisk produced the first flash-based solid-state drive (SSD) in a 2.5-inch hard disk drive form factor for IBM with a 20 MB capacity priced at about $1,000.[4]
In 1992, SanDisk (then SunDisk) introduced FlashDisk, a series of memory cards made for the PCMCIA or PC card form factor, so they could be inserted into the expansion slots of many laptops and handheld PCs of the time. Unlike other similar products at the time, FlashDisks did not require a battery to store their contents. SanDisk discontinued their production in 2002, and the highest capacity model had 8 gigabytes of capacity.[5]
In 1995, just before its initial public offering, SunDisk changed its name to SanDisk, possibly to avoid confusion with Sun Microsystems, a prominent computer manufacturer at the time.[5]
On May 10, 2000, the Toshiba Corporation of Japan and the SanDisk Corporation said that they would jointly form a new semiconductor company to produce advanced flash memory, primarily for digital cameras.[6]
In 2005 SanDisk entered the digital audio player market with the release of its first flash-based MP3 player, the SanDisk Sansa e100.[7] As soon as 2006, they became the second largest maker of digital audio players in the United States behind Apple.[8]
Acquisitions and growth
In October 2005, SanDisk acquired Matrix Semiconductor.[9]
In June 2012, SanDisk acquired Schooner Information Technology, developer of the flash-optimized database software SchoonerSQL and caching software Membrain.[12]
In July 2013, SanDisk acquired SMART Storage Systems, a producer of SSDs for the enterprise market, for US$307 million.[13]
In June 2014, SanDisk acquired Fusion-io, a producer of flash memory for enterprise data centers, for $1.1 billion.[14]
On January 8, 2015, NexGen Storage, which had been acquired by Fusion-io, was spun out to become an independent company once again.[17]
In January 2016, Pivot3 (based in Austin, Texas) acquired NexGen Storage.[18]
SanDisk was acquired by hard disk drive manufacturer Western Digital on May 12, 2016, for US$19 billion.[19][20]
In 2019 Sanjay Mehrotra received a lifetime achievement award at a trade show.[21]
^"Santa Clara Valley Chapter Meeting: 'Future Directions for Semiconductor Non-Volatile Memory". Santa Clara University: IEEE Electron Devices Society. January 16, 1990.
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