WTrader,
I sensed your enthusiasm with the digital camera purchase and found
it very encouraging. As it turns out, Toshiba is major partner of
SanDisk and they have co-funded a wafer foundry in Virginia which will
produce highly advanced NAND and multilevel NAND wafers for consumer
products such as digital cameras like yours. Unfortunately, SanDisk
benefits most from card form factors which it has invented and
promoted. These include:
CompactFlash (CF)
MultiMediaCard (MMC)
Secure Digital Card (SDMC)
SmartMedia is a Toshiba invention and is supported by companies like
Olympus, Fuji, most of the MP3 manufacturers and, logically, Toshiba.
Although SanDisk private labels SmartMedia at retail, I am not sure
they benefit much from their sales as the cards are purchased "whole"
from their SmartMedia supplier (which may be Toshiba). Thus, Toshiba
benefits most from the sales of SmartMedia of any brand name. I also
believe that anyone who decides to manufacture SmartMedia will pay a
licensing fee to Toshiba. As such, SmartMedia is a low margin Toshiba
product which actually competes with CompactFlash and, to a lesser degree,
MultiMediaCard. This is why SanDisk isn't honking the SmartMedia horn
on their website.
Please let us know how you like the camera.
Aus |
