Aus, concerning royalties/licensing, SNDK is very silent. I've sent to fax letters and made three phone calls to Calderoni but haven't heard a peep in more than two weeks. Will advise if I hear anything.
As to demand for CF, I visited the largest photographic store in the Rochester, NY area yesterday and found a large supply of CF cards in stock, from 16 mb up to 128 mb. At least three dozen were on display, and the store clerk said they have a complete turnover in investory usually in less than a month (i.e., they reorder every month). They sell all the popular camera brands, including Olympus, Sony, Canon, Nikon, Kodak, etc. They currently are pushing the new Olympus SLR with 4 mp resolution and the new dye sublimation printer made by Olympus, which produces a print quality considerably better than anything available on conventional photographic printing from commercial processors. Conventional cameras, accessories, and darkroom equipment now take up only about 15 percent of store area--this in Kodak's home town. One of the more popular high end digital cameras is the Canon, built on a 35 mm body, with capability to use the EOS AE lenses. Their price for the body alone is just under $3,000. They generally do not discount most other prices. The 128 mb SanDisk CF sells for about $242.
The lesson I get from this anecdotal evidence is that demand for digital cameras and equipment continues at a healthy pace and does not correlate at all with the gloom and doom for shares of equipment manufacturers.
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