Interview with ADATA’s MD – JJ Jan

ADATA are a growing company, well known amongst enthusiast circles for producing a wide range of memory products. We recently had some time to sit down and have a chat with JJ Jan, ADATA's Managing Director in The Netherlands.

Allan: Hello JJ Jan, can you tell our readers a little about yourself and your duties for A-DATA? Are they a good company to work for?

JJ Jan: I came to The Netherlands in 2001, to setup Gigabyte office in Eindhoven. After 7 years working there, Thermaltake approached me in 2008 to be their VP for Global Sales Operation, based in their office in Schiedam, near Rotterdam. ADATA is world-wide number 2 for the DRAM products, and number 4 for Flash products, for both OEM and our own brands, but their market position in Europe is not as high as worldwide.

I think the main reason is that ADATA had no Europe office before, so they can’t well managed the channel with localized facilities. ADATA approached me to setup their European office, I think the potential of ADATA in Europe should be very big, so I decided to join ADATA, from 1st of March 2010.

Allan: Are you an enthusiast? Do you like overclocking or gaming? What is your main computer?

JJ Jan: To be honest, I’m not an PC Game enthusiast, even I’m not a console Game enthusiast. I do have a Wii, but I don’t play if for months. I do like watching people overclocking, to see how can they tune their PC to the limit. I’ve many computers, 1 as Media Center to watch Movies, or TV on lines. I’ve one Notebook, from the company. I’ve another Touch Screen PC for kids.

Allan: Can you tell us a little about A-DATA? how many people work for the company within all the various R&D and production divisions?

JJ Jan: ADATA has about 2000 employees worldwide, mainly for Productions in our own factories in China and Taiwan, about 1500 person. R&D is about 200, the rest for Sales&Marketing.

Allan:  ADATA have recently released several portable hard drives, such as the ‘fashionably designed' 2.5 unit (SH02). How much of a focus for ADATA is this specific market?

JJ Jan: Portable HDD, you normally carry with you, so that you’d like to make it matching your nice Notebook, fashion bag.. etc. ADATA is not making HDD itself, so we need to do products different than the others.

Allan: One of the most exciting releases we have seen recently from A-DATA is the XPG Gaming Series DDR3 1600G 8GB dual channel kit. How has this product been received so far?

JJ Jan: XPG is doing very good in Germany, NL, and some other countries in Europe. For UK, we’ve big room to grow. We’ll do lots of PR and Reviews for this product.

Allan: How much of a focus is USB3 for A-DATA? The adoption rate is slowly increasing, have you any exciting USB 3 products you would like to talk about?

JJ Jan: USB3.0 is the main topic of Computex for the PC Components field. The speed of USB3.0 can be 10 times quicker than USB2.0, and it’s downward compatible. ADATA is one of the first company who introduced USB 3.0, with many solutions at once

Allan: Memory is obviously a main concern for A-DATA and your product range is extensive in all areas from Flash memory to High performance ram. Are there any products you would like to discuss with our readership right now which you feel show A-DATA as being a market leader?

JJ Jan: ADATA is worldwide number 2 for DRAM, number 4 for Flash. Combination of OEM and our own Brand.

Allan: Do A-DATA sales figures show a higher level of adoption of SSD drives in the last year? We all know the benefits but the costs are still quite high for most people, what are your views?

JJ Jan: SSD adoption for high capacity drive is still not high. But for the market price less than 200 Euro, for the capacity less than 100G, the adoption is getting higher.

For Desktop, most of current application for SSD is still for OS HDD only, with combination of standard HDD for storage. For notebooks, SSD can extend the battery life, with higher stability, compared to HDD.
As Notebooks are normally no space for 2 HDD, the capacity of SSD become more important. Right now, SSD for Notebooks business is mainly for Professional uses, when the price is not so sensitive.
For consumers notebook, the current price of SSD still too high.

ADATA do offer an easy upgrade kit for HDD to SSD, this allow users to easy upgrade their Notebook with SSD.

Allan: Have you any cool and interesting products being released in the near future you can talk about?

JJ Jan: Yes, the Nobility Series N004, here is some information.

Allan: Thanks for your time JJ Jan, have you anything else you would like to say to our readership before signing off?

JJ Jan: ADATA is world-wide number 2 for DRAM and number 4 for Flash.
We need to get same market position in Europe!!

Feel free to discuss in our forums over here or just leave a quick comment below.

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