Now. And then buy some more on any pullbacks. With 90% of the silicon carbide market, CREE has nothing but upsides in front of it. If you take a look, they have all the bases covered. Take wireless and data storage alone.
They have the intellectual property, the manufacturing discipline to control their technology as they aim for economies of scale and the ability to forge key relationships with companies like Nokia, which is trying to stimulate a 40% annual wireless phone replacement cycle in a global industry approaching the billion unit milestone (2002). In Japan, the replacement rate is close to 100% annually.
That's a form and function equation for Nokia which includes differentiating features like SiC LEDs especially since Motorola and Ericsson are gearing up to challenge its leadership position. The potential is staggering, actually, if you consider the current rule of thumb in wireless devices: Bluetooth for 30 meters, Wireless LANs for 300 meters, Wireless Data for 3000 meters, Satellite Data for 300,000 meters. Overlay on top of that invisible backbone: PCs, laptops, mini-laptops, versatile PDAs/Pocket PCs/2-way pagers and wireless phones.
Data Storage at home (optical) and at work (Magneto-optical, Terastor, Optical tape) represent yet another promising market. Corporate data requirement is growing close to 100% a year requiring HSM or Hierarchical Storage Management techniques to complement disk-based storage with tape and optical storage (magneto-optical, near-field recording, far-field recording, rewritable CDs and DVDs). |
