Amethystum eyes upgrading image storage space as cellphones clog up

Amethystum Storage Technology Co Ltd, a Guangzhou-based company that mainly engages in blue-ray content storage, said it is highly confident regarding its growth potential, fueled by robust demand for long-term data storage.

The STAR Market-listed company has been the sole domestic enterprise to have mastered core technologies and independent intellectual property rights in the optical storage sector. Amethystum believes that down the road, there will be rigid demand for optical storage, which uses lasers to store and retrieve data from optical media such as disks.

As information technology increasingly drives economic growth, by 2025, China is expected to generate more data than the United States and become the largest datasphere. Data created and replicated in China will outpace the global average by 3 percent annually, according to a study from International Data Corp and data storage firm Seagate.

"Demand for data storage is growing exponentially, and about 80 percent of data is cold data, which is not frequently used. Optical storage is an efficient way to store such data as the data can't be tampered with," said Zhong Guoyu, general manager of Amethystum.

"The energy-saving optical storage system can save data for a long period of time, and it requires about one-tenth of the energy consumption compared with traditional hard disks. The rapid development of the big data industry in China has promoted the advancement of optical storage technology, and the further improvement of storage systems will help the big data industry to move forward," he said.

Currently, optical storage accounts for about 3 percent of the total storage market, and the proportion is expected to grow to 10 percent in the future, according to a research report by CITIC Securities.

As the building of new infrastructure such as big data centers is essential for the enhancement of the nation's digital economy, the investment has provided huge business opportunities for data storage industrial players such as Amethystum.

The company itself is also building big data centers based on optical storage technologies, and providing core infrastructure for regional economic development.

Most customers of Amethystum have traditionally been public and business entities like banks, hospitals and public security bureaus. But Zhong said the company's expansion of business to more individual consumers will be an inevitable trend.

By the end of June, Amethystum will launch its latest consumer product Photoegg nationwide and later in overseas markets. The newly developed device, with a disk drive installed within, can save up to 2 terabytes of data. The device can be encrypted and placed at home to store, classify and manage photos for extended periods.

"Chinese consumers are taking increasingly more photos using higher pixels, and they often lack enough storage space on their mobile phones and computers. The personal photo egg device can provide more storage space and avoid the potential of privacy leakage when storing on public cloud platforms, as the equipment is put in a private environment," Zhong said.