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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates
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To: StockHawk who wrote (10285)11/14/1999 11:54:00 AM
From: John Stichnoth  Read Replies (2) of 54805
 
Stock--Good post.

I made a pretty good effort to find out about smartmedia the other day, but have been unable to find out:

1. Who makes SmartMedia?

2. Is SmartMedia proprietary, or is it a consortium standard, or what?

My search did reveal that SmartMedia runs about 15% cheaper than Compact Flash of the same capacity. I'm not sure that means anything other than the supply/demand picture is easier for SmartMedia than CompactFlash.

An anecdote: I went into my local camera store (note: NOT electronics store) the other day and asked if they had any 2 meg digital cameras. He had one, from Fuji.
I asked, "Does it take CompactFlash?"
Him: "No, smartmedia. Most cameras take smartmedia, maybe two-thirds."
Me: "What size comes with the camera?"
Him: "8 megs"
Me: "Can I get larger memory?"
Him: "Yes, I've got 16 meg"
Me: "Can I get 32 megs?"
Him: "Yes, but it's hard to get".

Some comments based on that encounter:

1. Sandisk is still swimming upstream against some entrenched competition.
2. His estimates of market share contradict a review of websites. One website I looked at shows both smartmedia and CompactFlash on sale. The smartmedia offering listed 8 camera manufacturers as using it. The CompactFlash offering listed 19 manufacturers.
3. The camera store owner's attitude might be different from an electronics store's.
4. The additional cost of CompactFlash cards over smartmedia ($15) is trivial in comparison with the camera cost--$795.

Best,
JS

[Voluntary disclosure: Long SNDK, although not as a pure Gorilla play. I think we may still be a year away from confirmation of SNDK as a gorilla, and flash technology is not particularly disruptive].
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