SanDisk 2004 Annual Report Download - page 16

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Table of Contents
MP3 Players. Our new digital audio players face competition from products offered by other companies, including Apple
Computer, Inc., or Apple, Creative Technologies, Ltd., or Creative, iriver America, Inc., or iriver, Rio Digital Networks North
America, Inc., or Rio, and Samsung.
Other. There are other technologies that compete with our product offerings. There are many companies that are attempting to
develop memory cells that use different designs and materials than the semiconductors in the marketplace today. When these
technologies can be manufactured in high volume, they could have a significant cost advantage over NAND memory technologies.
We also face competition from hard disk drives. Small hard disk drives have a lower cost per megabyte today than does NAND flash,
however the minimum density is higher making the hard disk drive expensive in applications that may not require as much memory as
the hard disk provides. The hard disk drives in the market today also have significant power requirements and are not as rugged as
flash memory. The competitive disadvantages of these other technologies may be reduced or eliminated over time.
Employees
As of January 2, 2005, we had 876 full−time employees, including 340 in research and development, 131 in sales and marketing,
180 in general and administration and 225 in operations. None of our employees are represented by a collective bargaining agreement
and we have never experienced any work stoppage. We believe that our employee relations are satisfactory.
Executive Officers
Our executive officers, who are elected by and serve at the discretion of our Board of Directors, are as follows (all ages are as of
March 1, 2005): Name Age Position
Eli Harari 59 President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Sanjay Mehrotra 46 Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Nelson Chan 43 Executive Vice President and General Manager, Consumer
and Handset Business
Judy Bruner 46 Executive Vice President, Administration and Chief Financial
Officer
Eli Harari, the founder of SanDisk, has served as President and Chief Executive Officer and as a director of SanDisk since June
1988. Dr. Harari founded Wafer Scale Integration, a privately held semiconductor company, in 1983 and was its President and Chief
Executive Officer from 1983 to 1986, and Chairman and Chief Technical Officer from 1986 to 1988. From 1973 to 1983, Dr. Harari
held various management positions with Honeywell Inc., Intel Corporation and Hughes Aircraft Microelectronics. Dr. Harari holds a
Ph.D. in Solid State Sciences from Princeton University and has more than 70 patents issued in the field of non−volatile memories and
storage systems. Dr. Harari is a board member of Tower.
Sanjay Mehrotra co−founded SanDisk in 1988 and has served as our Vice President of Engineering, Vice President of Product
Development, Director of Memory Design, and Product Engineering. Mr. Mehrotra is currently Executive Vice President and Chief
Operating Officer. Mr. Mehrotra has more than 24 years of experience in the non−volatile semiconductor memory industry including
engineering and engineering management positions at Intel Corporation, Seeq Technology, Integrated Device Technology and Atmel
Corporation. Mr. Mehrotra earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of
California, Berkeley. He also holds several patents and has published articles in the area of non−volatile memory design and flash
memory systems.
Nelson Chan brings more than 20 years of high−technology marketing and engineering experience and has served as our Vice
President of Marketing, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing and Senior Vice President and General Manager,
Retail Business Unit. Mr. Chan is currently our Executive Vice President and General Manager of our Consumer and Handheld
Business. Prior to joining us in 1992,
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