Aus, you may be right that Lexar has convinced Samsung there is a way to work around the '987 patents and avoid royalties to SNDK. But it hasn't happened yet, to my knowledge. You can be sure that if it had, Lexar would be sending press releases all over the place, bragging that they now had a product that was different and better than SanDisk's. Why don't we see such PR?
As to the lawsuits Lexar is filing, the mere filing of a lawsuit does not mean that they have a legitimate cause of action. What a lawsuit like that does is to have a little nuissance value for Lexar, making it less likely the smaller companies will want to mess around with removable flash cards. This would leave more business to either Lexar or SanDisk.
The cc was not particularly interesting, since most of the comments were straight out of the narrative on the quarterly report. But Eli had a few comments about the smaller companies probably being unable to weather the current conditions and leaving the market as a result. The implication is that SNDK will pick up some of this business. The other comment that I thought was interesting was the emphasis on the "very important" relationship between SNDK and Toshiba. Even though SNDK gave up its right to any royalties from this relationship, it got in return the muscle and the manufacturing/marketing/management experience of a really big company involved in electronic appliances. The two will share the output of the Virginia plant equally, and when that plant is in full operation later this year, it will be the lowest cost producer.
Good bye, Lexar, and good riddance!
Art |
