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Corsair director responds to Fudzilla article

by on26 September 2008

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Interview: We feel great, a lot of new products coming


Paul Watkins, a Corsair veteran who works as a Director or European Sales at Corsair, has found some time to respond to our story about the state of affairs in the company. You can find the original article here.

How are the sales of memory and PSU products doing?

Extremely well. We are having a record year for XMS. We are also delighted with the popularity of the Dominator. It can now be found powering the flagship gaming PCs of every significant gaming PC builder in Europe and the USA.

The success of our Power Supply family is breathtaking. By focusing on making best-in-class Power Supplies that give honest wattage alongside rock-solid and near-silent performance, we have won the confidence of enthusiasts and gamers. Our PSU family has been winning buckets of awards all year and the current 1,000W is getting the best possible reviews. We are delighted with the situation.

The component market in general is not having a great time. We all see that the world’s economies are having problems. We all also know that memory prices are incredibly low right now. This makes it hard for the companies that sell vanilla RAM, which brings low value to end users. Fortunately for Corsair, we continue to sell products that are loaded with engineering and special features and employ unique technology. That gives us the ability to remain strong and profitable.

There are plenty of less fortunate companies that are being forced to take desperate measures. We expect there to be companies that fall out of sight in the coming months. Any company that doesn’t want this to happen to them better focus on giving a first-class product and service to their customers and ensure that they are running efficiently.


Did Corsair go through some structural changes this year?

You betcha! Every year Corsair achieves massive increases in the volume of units that we ship. So, every year we have to augment our personnel and procedures to keep ahead of our customers’ needs. 2008 has also been a stellar year for unit shipments. So, we continued the process of change that we began some years ago. 

Over the past couple of years, we have strengthened our corporate structure so that now we have an organizational structure that a multi-billion dollar company would recognize as best-practice.


Did you lose some people, including key managers?

When a football team moves up through the divisions, it needs to improve the squad of players. Corsair is no different; we won’t always have the same team on the pitch.

Our customers continue to have the highest expectations of Corsair’s customer service, quality and performance. We will continue to make the necessary changes to meet and exceed those expectations.

We are very pleased with the results, so we don’t expect to be putting in a call to José Mourinho.


Why didn’t you announce as many products this year as before?

I don’t think that that’s an accurate picture. We have released new USB drives, a slew of PSU products this year, alongside numerous high-performance DDR3 memory modules. We are offering more and more families of products for gamers to choose from.

What you might be observing (and misinterpreting as a drop) is a combination of two things. Some other companies are having a tough time finding interesting things to talk about, so they are releasing products that would not have the merit to find their way into Corsair’s portfolio, like DRAM modules in a rainbow of different paint-jobs. This just annoys shop owners and confuses end-users trying to buy RAM. The other thing that is in evidence is that the switch-over to DDR3 is later than was expected.

There are only a few impressive DDR3 platforms currently and the bulk of the market remains with DDR2. Whilst we expect this to change in the next few months, it has meant that 2008 has seen relatively little impetus to drive DDR2 innovation. Corsair only releases products that we think add value for end users. We’ve kept the lid on our paint pots.


What are the latest products that you plan for this and next quarter in memory, PSU and USB key market?

The unannounced products coming in the next few months are…well, unannounced. So you’ll have to forgive me for not announcing them here.

But we have recently launched some super products. The most recent launches include a 64GB version of the Flash Voyager, last week, which is perfect for a robust and portable backup device. The 8GB Voyager Mini (very cool) launched two weeks ago. This gives a robust, big density, small form factor drive that fits conveniently on a key-ring, but isn’t so small that it could get lost in a tooth cavity.

The 1,000 Watt Power supply is slightly less recent, but is gaining huge momentum with ultra-enthusiasts. Whilst we don’t expect our world-record-breaking, lab-tuned, 2133MHz DDR3 Dominator modules to suit any but the extreme enthusiast, we have launched their throttled-back namesakes, in the form of DDR3 2000MHz and 1800MHz Dominators. And for those with more temperate tastes, but who still want the best cooling solution, we have 1600MHz with DHX (you know, the ones with the four sets of heat sinks and fins).

So, there are plenty of new products to talk about.


Overall how does Corsair feel?

The team at Corsair feels excited about the technological changes that are about to hit us all. We are constantly looking for ways to give hardware enthusiasts a better experience and we can see lots of opportunity for that on the road ahead.

We expect the whole market to have a rough ride in the coming months. But our customers can expect Corsair to be standing strong and giving them the service, quality and performance that they have come to expect from us.

It is up to you, our bellowed readers, to draw your own conclusions.
Last modified on 27 September 2008
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