EXCLUSIVE: EC-Asia International Ltd, one of Singapore’s largest manufacturers of memory products is set to enter the local market from July 2006.

It will compete with the likes of SanDisk, Seagate and Kingston in the DRAM and flash memory categories using its ACEplus-branded products.

Sales & Marketing Director, Mr Ang Ah Sin, spoke exclusively with SmartHouse News and said EC-Asia, which was incorporated in 1993, has grown from being a distributor of computer components to a manufacturer of memory components with comprehensive testing capabilities.

Ang Ah Sin said EC-Asia International is an ASX-listed company (code ECI) “But we have traditionally very much been focusing on Northern Hemisphere markets, particularly China, Hong Kong and Europe, so have done very little in Australia, as yet.

“With the growth in demand for memory products, especially flash memory products for digital cameras and mobile phones, we are now looking at entering the Australian CE and IT & T markets. We have the capacity to design, manufacture and distribute a full range of memory products so we can meet the needs of different consumer markets.

“We understand that consumers today are very sophisticated and behave differently in different markets. In Singapore, for example, memory ownership is very common because the cost if very low – about AUD$15 for 128MB of mini SD memory – whereas the Australian market still consumes a lot of the lower-capacity memory products. We are currently evaluating the Austrailan consumer market to establish at which points we will enter, but expect to do so in our new fiscal year (July 2006).”

And how does EC-Asia plan to differentiate its ACEplus products from other local existing brands? “We are able to control our manufacturing costs so will always definitely be very price competitive,” says Ang Ah Sin. “And our products will make sense to consumers. Our research shows that consumers are often very confused about memory — memory write speeds, especially. We will attempt to educate consumers about how they should be selecting memory.

“We want consumers to see ACEplus as a responsible brand that is prepared to back its products and stand up and educate consumers about exactly what they’re buying so they understand the difference between our products and other products in the market. Also, so they can understand developments effecting memory, such as security issues. Mobile viruses, for example, are an expanding threat. We plan to address this online and in our marketing, and will tailor our approach to Austrailan consumers. We will also seek to work with security vendors. That’s definitely an objective for us.”

Ang Ah Sin says EC-Asia is partnered with an IT distribution company in Singapore, called AsiaPac and will be able to extend distribution reach to Australia, however, will be seeking local distribution partners and also examining OEM partnership opportunities. He says “Our fundamental requirement for local distributors will be those who are familiar with the memory space and who offer a creative model. We are looking for creativity, which means we will consider all possible channels to achieve a wide distribution. We are seeking those who are committed to set up a structure to support our model and ideally those who don’t have too many brands.”

Ang Ah Sin describes the storage market as rapidly evolving and, with ever decreasing costs and increasing storage capacities, envisages a time when consumers will store flash memory in albums rather than printed photos. “Memory will be affordable enough to leave labelled in an album to be viewed via a player and then returned, in the way printed photos currently are. That time isn’t too far off, given the cost of buying and processing film, much of which you end up discarding,” he says. “There will be a new shift in lifestyle photography, mobile phone storage and digital musical storage and we are confident ACEplus will be a sizeable part of that shift”.

See www.ecasiasg.com