RE: Competitive Landscape: Has Flash Won the War?
Lately I have begun experimenting with digital photography and reflecting upon the advantages and limitations of the various storage media on the market. Thus far it appears to me that CF has been winning the standards war, which has been a great boon for SNDK. I am struck, however, by the incipient entry of the Clik drive into this space (beginning with the long awaited Agfa eclick camera). The attractive feature, of course, is the cost of the Clik storage media, which at $10 per 40MB seems to be less than one tenth the cost per MB of competitive flash solutions. I realize, of course, that IOM has been hyping the Clik for well over a year and this has somewhat damaged its reputation. What I am wondering is how the Clik solution compares to flash as to performance issues (power consumption, reliability, durability, transfer time), total cost of ownership (including storage medium and the drive necessary to support it), and scalability (i.e., how difficult or costly will it be to ramp Clik up from 40MB to 80MB viz-a-viz its competitors?).
My initial thinking is that the price point for Clik may prove quite seductive in gaining market share, but I am totally ignorant of these other critical issues. Can anyone please enlighten me? |
