The New (Profitable) Ramtron Message Board

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Technology Stocks : The New (Profitable) Ramtron

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To: makeuwonder who wrote (104)	10/28/2007 12:04:55 PM
From: sleupendriewer	of 647

well, my view on the smart card "thing" right now is like this : - ramtron alone or even with a specialized manufacturer would realy have a hardd time to get into this buisness - there are huge and longtime players - furtheron ramtron would realy have to make imo some investemnts in ip then .. - I like it that TI is doing this step now - first of all it will be one very prominent showcase for fram in mass-production if it works out. I'm totaly aware that ramtron will not earn a penny directly on this deal made by TI - because of the conditions of the licensing and production agreement. BUT : if this kind of "market introduction" is successful there will be follow-ons by "second sources" - and these will need a license agreement - and bring in royalities - simply speaking - in a market where you have no grip - you can't earn anything - but when you are in it - you have at least the chance ... but I assume that there is another more important side effect (that I personaly like more) - if TI brings these smart cards - they will have quite some pressure to bring the yield up - in order to get the right cost structure - smart card-market is imo nomraly very competitive and you have to be able to control your process quite good - so this means that I would expect TI to be able or to get quite good yields out of the FRAM-enhanced CMOS process - and this will then also help ramtron - because they are (afaik) buying untested wafers from TI - so if you have 90% yield instead of 80% - you will have more than 10%-points(!) more gross margin (because you pay the same for the wafer) - and this realy hits the numbers afterwards ;) so : I think the deal with TI can be a real win-win situation if the products that ramtron is selling and that TI will be selling (I assume smart cards with something like 32 bit processors and standalone dsp enhanced with fram) doesn't interfere (and from what I read and heard this is the case because ramtron won't be able to do what TI might be doing in the dsp or smart-card-buisness) ... addon : but maybe things will progress - and there is also besides a market for high perfomance smart cards (with 32 bit mcus) other buisness - and as the 8-bit-mcu-buisness with the versa might complement the high performance dsps that TI might bring along ramtron might be able to get (after a succes of TI in the smart-card/rfid/id-area) with something fujitsu is already rtrying for soem time now - to get a foothold in the buisness of simpler id-devices with 8-bit-cpu or something similar for not so demanding applications (a buisness which ramtron only slighlty serves right now - you find some fram right now - afaik - in some discrete assembled siemens rfid-tags for productin automation for example) ... this is part of my view on the smart card topic - just my 2 cents ...

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