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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation
WDC 150.21+8.7%Oct 31 9:30 AM EST
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To: Ausdauer who wrote (5945)6/6/1999 7:55:00 AM
From: Bill Fischofer  Read Replies (2) of 60323
 
Re: CF Replacements

I don't think its a question of replacement per se, but the fact that there is little inherent "lock in" potential in the storage hardware business. All storage is ultimately a commodity characterized by price and capacity, which is why the disk companies are having such difficulty getting any sort of financial traction these days. In the removable storage market the only way to get any sort of "edge" is to have a low-cost, high-margin device which will tempt folks to use it for long-term storage rather than simply as a temporary storage and transfer mechanism. The only company I am aware of that has attempted this strategy is Iomega (IOM) but they have had only limited success with it.

Given the pace of hard drive evolution this strategy becomes more difficult with each passing year. For example, recent GMR developments at Read-Rite (RDRT) and others suggest that 50Gb hard drives will be commonplace next year. With cheap hard drives of that capacity one can envision sub-$500 digital "stereos" that can store 1000 CD's worth of MP3 files. Clearly with this sort of capacity folks aren't likely to use CF (or anything else) as much more than a transfer mechanism for loading up their portable MP3 player with music for their morning jog. Indeed, given sufficient bandwidth the need to perform physical transfers of any kind goes away entirely, and this is another technology curve that the removable storage market faces.
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