与CEO对谈– Special Edition for CEO Week On Air: K.S. Pua, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Phison Electronics (8299 TT)
K.S. Pua, CEO of Phison Electronics is a man of action, so even when he takes the time to sit down for an interview, he remains animated – ready at any moment to jump up and draw a flow chart or a graph showing industry trends on the meeting room white board. K.S. is passionate about the NAND controller IC design and NAND storage ODM business, and it takes only a few minutes for any visitor to the company’s Zhunan, Taiwan Headquarters to spot this.
Asked what he sees as key growth drivers in the next few years, K.S. says, “We recently gained a design win on the AMD Ryzen CPU and motherboard, the world’s first system to provide PCle Gen 4 connectivity. We now have a 1-year technology lead over our peers and have greatly expanded our addressable market in the SSD arena, opening the door to opportunities in the gaming console, gaming PC, automotive, datacenter and IP licensing markets.”
K.S. continues, “During the next several years, we expect 5G technology to enable demand growth for a wide variety of NAND-storage applications such as networking infrastructure, edge computing, AIoT, cloud services and electric, autonomous vehicles. To benefit from these trends, we plan sustained investment in R&D. One of our focus areas is advanced NAND controller ICs, and we are already developing versions based on the 7nm lithography process. Another focus of our R&D is customized NAND storage devices. We are planning to hire and train more than 1,000 new engineers over the next 5 years to meet the demands of our technology development roadmap. This year alone we will hire 200 to 300 new engineers, and we target to have 2,500 total engineers by 2025.”
One of Phison’s key competitive competencies is the wide range of applications for which it can provide customized solutions. We asked K.S. to provide more insight into Phison’s capabilities in this area. Without pausing, he explained, “As a NAND flash storage solution provider, Phison has diversified its product applications into many attractive market sub-segments. In the automotive arena, we provide ODM storage solutions and automotive-grade controllers such as eMMC for in-vehicle systems. We are also a major player in the market for customized embedded storage solutions. In fact, we have more than one thousand clients in the military, medical and industrial fields. In this space, we provide a specialized service that few other players can provide – we keep buffer NAND flash inventories on hand for select clients in exchange for longer order visibility. In the area of enterprise storage memory, we mostly focus on legacy NAND storage applications with robust order volumes, including data center and cloud server. We also provide ASIC services and license IP to international systems integrators for high-end enterprise applications.
When asked Phison’s game plan for gaining market share, K.S. concluded, “Our industry-leading R&D intensity will help open the door to many new markets. Additionally, we believe that we stand alone in this industry in being able to combine a high degree of product diversification and solution customization, while at the same time competing in high volume cost-competitive segments of the market. In the long run, it is this unique model which will help us continue to grow faster than the overall industry, thereby increasing our market share and providing ample cashflow for further technology development.”
Phison will attend QIC’s CEO Week on Air, which will run from 8/31 to 9/4. Click here to find an introduction to the company and basic financial data.
If you would like to arrange a meeting with K.S. Pua, please contact yvonnehuang@qtumic.com