JMD,
I was a big believer last year in the LSI ASIC designed specifically for the digital camera market. I believe that Casio was one of the first to utilize LSI's technology for image acquisition and compression, but their camera line has been marketed poorly. I hesitated buying LSI due to the seemingly bottomless fall into the low-teens and the endless number of companies touting "system-on-a-chip" solutions. In retrospect I kick myself for passing in the low-teens, mid-teens, and low 20's as LSI has proved quite resilient.
Well, you can't win them all!
SanDisk is the investment "angle" I am playing in the digital photography market because of...
1) substantial intellectual properties (which they have defended successfully),
2) pervasive nature of CompactFlash in the digital camera market and its adoption as the de facto standard,
3) fab-less structure with contract assembly being provided by Celestica,
4) acceptance on CompactFlash into other platforms (MP3 players, handheld/palmtop markets, vertical markets...) which will likely experience explosive growth in 2000 and beyond,
5) the "engineering" of MMC as the likely successor to CF,
6) management is committed to not only promote the CF standard, but also the become the low cost producer of CompactFlash with a dedication to quality and functionality,
7) market share,
8) pure-play in several platforms (see #4 above).
Those interested in doing some due dilly can take a look at my investment thesis...
Message 10076891
Ausdauer |
