Pam, re: "obsolete-able if there is such a word!" It's called planned obsolescence, a business strategy introduced about 80 years ago by then General Motors chairman Alfred Sloan.
Reading the latest downgrades (coming just a couple of days before the latest earnings, at a time when there is virtually no corporate news, except for a new product announcement), I'm tempted to conclude that the downgrades are self serving--an effort to get the stock price down to a more interesting buying level.
The other possibility is that demand is increasing faster than many analysts have expected on account of new products and applications. The solid state music player SanDisk is introducing in time for holiday buyers could give some real competition to Apple's iPod. Low battery consumption, rugged, quiet, and capable of downloading music from a web site (through a computer) or from a built-in FM radio. Sounds like a winner. But the trend I really like is the increasing demand for convenient storage of computer files and/or images. This technology is already eating into the older CD storage devices.
When we see laptops being sold without hard drives but with removable flash memory, that will be a watershed point. Several months ago, I commented that there was no reason to expect a major change in fundamentals regarding SNDK. That seems to have been the case: Demand is strong and growing. NAND prices are stable, and to the extent that they are dropping, reflect improved productivity at least as much as competition. SanDisk is creating additional demand by introducing novel products.
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