Ausdauer, I think that it can't be underscored how pivotal the handset market will be to the future of the removable flash memory card industry. I've read that it's expected that 2.6 million PDAs and 5.5 million digital cameras are going to be sold this year. I haven't read any projections for standalone MP3 player sales, but I'm sure that even fewer of these devices will be sold. In comparision, over 280 million handsets were sold last year, and it's estimated that about 420 million will be sold this year, and over 1 billion by 2003. Granted, it's unreasonable to expect that all of those handsets sold in 2003 will contain slots for flash cards, but even if only 30% of them do, the size of this market will still easily dwarf all other removable flash markets combined.
Considering that Samsung doesn't make MMC cards, I'm assuming that their MP3 phone utilizes their SmartMedia cards. If this is the case, then for their sake, I hope that they shift to MMC. Given the support for MMC that's been granted by Ericsson, Siemens, Handspring, and nearly every MP3 device manufacturer in existence, the laws of network effects wouldn't work in SmartMedia's favor. Meanwhile, given the close relationship that Sandisk and Siemens have had, I'm assuming that the MMC in the Siemens SL45 is coming from Sandisk and not Hitachi.
However, I'm still a bit worried about the competitive threat posed by Hitachi. I've read the press release announcing Hitachi's 64MB MMC chip (http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=14180940), and I've also found out about Dane-Elec, a flash card manufacturer that by means of utilizing Hitachi's chips, has released a 128MB MMC card, something that Sandisk hasn't yet come out with:
dane-memory.com
dane-memory.com
It should be noted that the wireless handset market's one of the most competitive in the entire consumer electronics industry. Provided that component shortages don't exist, manufacturers have been known to be ruthless in regards to bringing down the prices given to them by their suppliers for components that they need. In the short-term, since MP3 support will be relegated to a few high-end phones, and since the flash memory market's still a bit capacity-constrained, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. However, as capacity continues to get ramped, and as MP3/removable flash support becomes available on mass-market handsets, cost will become a significant issue.
For this reason, I'm concerned about how Sandisk's MMC products stack up to Hitachi's on a price/performance basis. In regards to price, the fact that Hitachi produces everything out of its own fabs could give it an advantage, assuming that, recent fab developments notwithstanding, Sandisk choses to continue to outsource much of its production. If anyone knows if/why Sandisk will have an edge on Hitachi in MMC production when it comes to price, transfer speeds, power usage, or anything else, or why Hitachi will have an edge on Sandisk, I'd be glad to hear from you.
Eric
PS - I doubt that SDMCs will have much success getting off the ground, Palm's support notwithstanding. While Palm will make sure that numerous devices will support the use of these cards, given that SDMC slots will also be able to handle standard MMCs, very few people will actually be willing to put up with the inconveniences that will inevitably be created by any kind of removable flash card incorporating advanced encryption/security features. For better or for worse, pirated rich media's here to stay. Even if Napster gets shut down, there's plenty of similar services out there ready to serve, many of which are structured in ways (no requests routed through the site's servers, use of offshore servers, company incorporated in Russia, Thailand, etc.) that'll prevent any American/European law enforcement agency intent on shutting them down from being able to do so. |
