Sandisk is planning to set up an assembly and test plant in India. The company owns over 50-per cent market share of world's flash devices and its capacity is expected to run out in some plants in the next two years.
"We are evaluating a global manufacturing, assembly and test plant in India. We are producing about 600 to 700 million units annually. I think we will definitely need another plant by 2013," Chief Strategy Officer and SVP Sumit Sadana said.
Sandisk's global team met with government officials in the capital last week. "We are evaluating the government incentives, skills and ecosystem," he added.
If Sandisk's plans for an India plant fructify, it will be a shot in the arm for the government. The Department of IT has been trying to attract large investments from chip and memory makers for the last six years. The government's earlier two attempts to attract such investments have failed miserably.
"Chip fabs need considerable amount of investment about $8 billion and I don't think we'll be opening up another fab. But a new assembly and test plant is definitely on an anvil. We expect flash market to grow more with the rise of more tablet-like devices, and a decline in hard disk market," said Sadana.
Sandisk estimates that the market for flash memory will grow to $4.5 billion by 2014.
