Good evening Aus,
Thanks for your reply. In your summary above of our discussion of ADC, you mysteriously slipped CompactFlash in to the summary leaving a potential investor to conclude that SST buys its NAND for CompactFlash cards off the shelf and possibly from FlashVision at that. But you and I have never agreed on or ascertained the origins of NAND flash for SST's CompactFlash card design.
You frequently imply that SNDK is making money from SST by virtue of SNDK's IP, but you have never been able to document this. Recently, you assumed that any NAND flash memory purchase from Toshiba for SST's ADC will benefit SNDK. Toshiba has over 50 billion dollars in annual sales. Whether Apacer, (not SST), purchases NAND from the relatively small JV FlashVision facility in Mansassus, Virginia (forecast to reach 1 billion in sales in 2002) is not clear by any means. Moreover, Toshiba and Sandisk will each separately market and sell their share of the output of the joint venture production to their respective customers. So your implied conclusion that SST's ADC module is some sort of "win" for SNDK is yet another stretch.
Here is the link for the FlashVision LLC announcement. www2.marketwatch.com{9D781E25-1BC1-413E-A9D3-6FC61B4E70BD}
I see products like ADC and Disk-on-Chip as being the ultimate destination of excess NAND output from the FlashVision fab once all flash card demand is met.
There you go again Aus; cleverly designing your post for the investor to connect the dots and conclude that Apacer (SST) will likely have some trouble getting NAND for ADC in the future. But your implied conclusion is poorly supported.
Low density flash market is primarily code storage, so "1" and "2" are really the same. Yes low density flash market is primarily code storage, but some code storage utilizes lower low density flash than others.
It would appear that SSTI is going to specialize in low density code and flash-enhanced controller technology. This statement is true but fails to mention that SST product line is well diversified in to other areas of flash, both code and data storage, and is expanding this diversification all the time. To view SST's complete product line visit ssti.com
You wrote:
1. To be honest I am not sure how the bartering system works.
2. I would never profess to know the SSTI business model.
Then you go on to say:
1. Further leveraging of the IP is something they will need to work on.
2. Adoption of SuperFlash technology by competitors does not currently lead to a secure revenue base for them.
3. I feel they have concentrated on near-term manufacturing considerations
I am quite certain you don't know how SST leverages its IP and whether or not SST is doing a good job of it. Yet you seem intent on conjuring up hypothetical deal structures and then posting conclusions generally referring to SST as short term focused. When we get some real facts regarding SST's numerous deals and business relationships, then we can draw some meaningful conclusions. In the meantime, growth in revenues and earnings is a much better indicator of how SST is executing.
Aus, you bring forth a lot of much needed research and personal knowledge about SNDK in these discussions and I thank you for that. You also keep raising some interesting questions. You are a little quick to assume the worst about other players in the flash industry, but that is to be expected from someone whose only stock in their profile is SNDK.
I have to get back to running my company lest it goes broke while I monitor my small flash investments. So I will be going back in to lurk mode and as befitting someone named Ausdauer, you can have the last word---for now.
Best regards, Huey
P.S. Sorry to see SNDK had to barter their multilevel cell technology away to Toshiba in exchange for Toshiba's advanced semiconductor process technologies. (gg)
P.S.S. I am also hedging my small flash bet in SNDK and SST with my long time investment in INTEL---the real number one flash producer. |
