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Joe James of Super Talent |
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Interview by Josh Walrath |
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Two years ago hardly anyone knew of Super Talent, but through the success of their retail desktop memory products and some aggressive marketing, the company is making some very positive impressions in the marketplace. I had the chance to ship Joe off a few questions I had about the company and the industry in general. My questions are in black while Joe's responses are in blue.
Hi Joe, please introduce yourself and tell us about your working experience in the PC world, as well as what you do at Super Talent? I’m currently Marketing Director at Super Talent Technology. I was previously Marketing Director at Corsair, and worked in sales and marketing in the motherboard industry for ten years. How long has Super Talent been around, and when did they decide to pursue a more retail oriented business plan? Super Talent was founded in 1991. The company historically kept a low profile, making memory for private label OEMs, and quietly became one of the world’s top memory manufacturers. A couple of years ago our management decided to transform the company – to refocus the company’s vast technical and manufacturing resources on developing leading edge products and building our own brand. We’ve worked hard for the past two years to become a leader in SSDs, server memory and extreme performance DDR2 and DDR3. Is Super Talent a member of JEDEC? Do you personally feel that JEDEC specification ratification is too slow? Or is that wait period a potentially a good thing? Yes, we’re a member of JEDEC. I think it’s good that JEDEC moves slowly. JEDEC has a good track record of introducing solid new memory standards. What do you expect memory pricing to do in the near term (6 months)? With fast and popular DDR-2 2 x 1 GB kits running around $65 to $75, how is Super Talent getting along with what is obviously thin margins? If memory gets any cheaper we’ll have to pay people to take it! Seriously, I’ve heard supply will tighten up a bit in 2008. I sure hope so; 2007 has been a tough year for memory vendors. How are DDR-3 sales going at this time? Can we expect large price cuts soon, or will DDR-3 remain a premium product due to the overwhelming support that DDR-2 has in both Intel and AMD motherboards? Do you expect the upcoming introduction of the Intel X48 enthusiast motherboards to help demand? DDR3 sales are still small, but steadily growing as new motherboards come out. X48 will definitely help. I don’t expect DDR3 prices to plummet, but they should continue to come down as volume ramps up. Right now the memory sweet spot does appear to be the 2 x 1 GB kits, but with a greater selection of 64 bit operating systems these days will we be seeing new 2 x 2 GB kits coming out in DDR-2 and DDR-3 formats? We do have 2x 2GB kits out now in DDR2 and DDR3, but they haven’t been all that popular yet, mainly due to the slow acceptance of 64-bit OS’es. Peoples’ choice of OS and hardware are typically driven by applications. Phenom has launched, and with it AMD has brought “unofficial” DDR-2 1066 support. While not a JEDEC specification, will Super Talent develop large capacity DDR-2 DIMMS at the higher speeds to support Phenom? Will we be seeing any new DDR-2 products at all? Most of our engineering focus lately has been on DDR3 and SSD products. We’re now in a very strong position with those two products. But we haven’t given up on DDR2 already by any means. We will likely introduce new DDR2 kits soon to support Phenom. While the first generation Super Talent MP3 players did not seem all that impressive when compared to competing models, this current generation certainly packs in the features. What are your eventual plans in this very competitive market and what do you expect to see in future MP3/MP4 players from Super Talent? It’s tough to break into the media player market because Apple is so dominant. Our first generation players were good, but our second gen units are dramatically improved. We’re adding more features with easier usability. I think that’s what customers want. We’ll continue to do the same with future products.
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