Intel and Siemens sign a three year, $2 billion agreement for Intel to provide Siemens with high density flash chips:
siliconinvestor.com
This is not good news for SST. They hope to expand into high density markets in the next year or two, but big potential customers seem to be signing multiyear agreements with the likes of Atmel, AMD and Intel. These agreements are frequently non-binding, but they also typically confer preferred status on the supplier. And they come with volume discounts, the more they buy the lower their cost, as they supplier awards rebates at the end of set terms, either quarterly or annually.
On the other hand, if these companies are using SuperFlash to produce their flash chips, then SST could get royalty income. I know that Intel licenses SuperFlash, but don't know how extensively they use it, or of course what the terms of the license is. However, SST will be well served if they can manage to get preferred supplier status from one or two of the big electronics producers over the next 6 months, if they indeed hope to be, as they have said, the largest revenue generator in the flash marketplace. They have a ways to go beat out Intel and AMD.
Sam |
