An Unforgettable Day for the O.C. Memory Industry
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If there was ever any doubt about the impact the computer memory industry has had on the high-tech landscape of Orange County, think about this number: $1.5 billion.
That’s how much money and stock two Orange County entrepreneurs, John Tu and David Sun, will collect for selling 80% of a memory company they founded nine years ago to Softbank Corp. of Japan.
The big payday for the founders of Kingston Technology Corp. in Fountain Valley is just the latest in a long series of Orange County successes in the computer memory industry. A cluster of Orange County companies, including Kingston, dominate the nation’s business in that category, employing more than 1,200 in the county and ringing up $2.28 billion in annual sales.
“Orange County is like the memory capital of the world,” said Peter Byrne, a spokesman for Viking Components, a $267-million company in Laguna Hills.
In recent years, Kingston, Viking and Simple Technology in Santa Ana have held places on Inc. magazine’s annual list of America’s 500 fastest-growing companies. A fourth memory company, Centon Electronics in Irvine, is no slouch, with expected sales of $309 million this year.
None of these companies is likely to post huge growth numbers this year because an oversupply of chips has pushed memory prices down as much as 75%. But Mike Moshayedi, who joined two of his brothers to found Simple in 1990, sees more success ahead, and said the Kingston deal is a sign that other major players in the computer industry, such as Softbank Corp., probably agree.
Moshayedi said one reason for the concentration of memory companies in Orange County is that Kingston has always served as an entrepreneurial inspiration. But he also joked that he hopes the windfall collected by Sun and Tu of Kingston will slow them down a bit.
“When you have $1 billion,” Moshayedi said, “I don’t know how much incentive you have to come to work every day.”
Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at [email protected]
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