SanDisk 2005 Annual Report Download - page 87

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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. One example is NROM technology which was invented and patented
by Saifun Semiconductors Ltd. 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 1, 2006, we had 1,083 full-time employees, including 450 in research and development, 167 in
sales and marketing, 208 in general and administration and 258 in operations. None of our employees is 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, 2006):
Name Age Position
Eli Harari ....................... 60 President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Sanjay Mehrotra .................. 47 Executive Vice President and Chief Operating
Officer
Nelson Chan ..................... 44 Executive Vice President and General Manager,
Consumer and Handset Business
Judy Bruner...................... 47 Executive Vice President, Administration and Chief
Financial Officer
Randhir Thakur . .................. 43 Executive Vice President, Technology and
Worldwide Operations
Yoram Cedar . . . .................. 52 Executive Vice President, Handset Business and
Corporate Engineering
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 is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. He
has also served as our Vice President of Engineering, Vice President of Product Development, Director of Memory
Design, and Product Engineering. Mr. Mehrotra has more than 25 years of experience in the non-volatile
semiconductor memory industry including engineering and engineering management positions at Intel Corpora-
tion, 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, Mr. Chan held marketing
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