Mauro: I admit it's getting a bit confusing to determine what the physical standards across the digital camera art will be. Much of the standardization discussion seems to concern the software format for the images, and other software or data transmission issues. The industry appears to be leaning towards PCMCIA-standard flash memory cards. So perhaps any "CompactFlash" card will work in any camera having a PCMCIA slot. It's not clear to me yet if this is so. I suppose the camera would have to be set-up for the CompactFlash standard though.
Again, I get back to the point that Sandisk's protected technology covers a lot of hardware-based means that could be used in or adapted to many "standards".
The Intel net site is impressive, but not convincing to me, although Intel has a long history of pressuring their retail sellers to force them to sell their products (re:Intel vs AMD). This bothers me some, but I'm still excited about Sandisks penetration into the marketplace long before everyone else. The CompactFlash page mentioned earlier IS impressive.
In any case, it seems to me that SNDK should do well, especially in view of how their flash memory products will spread out into other environments. Their patents covering hard disk emulation are very strong. Eventually they will get the costs down enough to make it worth while to replace our hard drives with plug-in IDE flash memories. They would be extremely durable, fast and small in footprint (re: laptops, palmtops, etc) with no moving parts. Such an environment is typical of the possible reach for their technology.
Competition will likely be a constant issue on this thread, making make for some good discussion. I believe Sandisk is on top of these matters.
Absent any significant news, I expect the stock price to linger where it is for awhile.
Anyway, continued good luck to all.
dave |
