Portable digital storage company SanDisk is preparing significant job cuts, or so reports Digital Music News. The job cuts will mainly effect the company's flash memory division, and there is no word on what impact, if any, there will be on the company's MP3 player division. The cuts come after a period when the price of storage devices has slumped in an increasingly competitive market place.
The company's CEO, Eli Harari, told reporters: "Industry wide NAND [a kind of flash memory] component pricing has deteriorated by approximately 50 percent in the past two months due to excess supply of NAND components coupled with first quarter seasonally weak demand. Although we believe there will be strong pickup in demand for our products in the second half of the year, we do not have visibility as to when the current aggressive pricing cycle will run its full course, and gross margins are likely to remain under significant pressure for several quarters".