Pam,
Macro picture: NOR flash is projected to grow slowly as it's a mature market. You reacted to this comment so it's a bit weird for me to see your current claim that I focused only on the micro picture. More about the macro picture below the next paragraph.
Micro picture: Spansion needs relative stable ASP's to make BE in H2, and there's some reason to believe that's possible with Numonyx loosing the incentive to initiate a new price war, and Samsung as ruthless as they are not positioned that well for the Nokia's of the world; they are better positioned to take share from Numonyx than from Spansion.
To your comment: "do you guys know the price differences between NAND and NOR?", here's hoping it isn't meant to be patronizing. Content wise, the rather big price differences are caused so far by cost differences, and to a lesser extent by different performance characteristics that defined the original market spaces. The picture of cost differences is changing because of the introduction in the NOR space of Quadbit, 300mm, faster than usual introduction of next node (45nm). In the NAND space the picture changes because floating gate doesn't scale nearly as easy anymore as it did. (Macro comment).
Now back to your comment that some here are "silly" to überhaupt compare NOR with NAND. My reply was they're already competing in high end cell phone market so it's rather normal to make the comparison, to which you then replied "you ain't seen nothing yet". Seeing how you now emphasize that NAND will compete with NOR even more, what does your original comment mean to you? ;-) ;-)
Basically I agree with you that Samsung will be a fierce competitor. I always have. There's a very good sized buffer though between Samsung and Spansion: Numonyx. Numonyx can't cause a price war, and because of many reasons discussed here it will be eaten by both Spansion and Samsung. Hence to survive and get money to equip their empty Catania fab they will need to focus on cost custting, and focus on the more profitable products. This will mean a planned reduction in outsourcing to Intel and STM (Numonyx only got one functioning 200mm fab, that's all) which means a planned decrease in market share. I think there's reason to believe that everyone around the table already 'agreed' to their respective mid term positions because there's little alternative. I think they only still can disagree on long term positions. Here's where the macro picture comes into play again: There's probably good sized places for Samsung/Tosh and Spansion for various reasons, but not for Numonyx as they're too late in about everything and phase change mem is in a down right ugly shape cost wise for a very long period at least. The NOR market isn't likely to disappear as it is projected to grow slowly for years. I add to that that I think that the NOR market is going to be serviced by newer technologies and that Spansion already mastered the by far most advanced and best accepted and evolving interim technology, except for high end where Samsung/Tosh have the more cost effective and evolving NAND based solutions. So long term (e.g. four years from now) Samsung/Tosh will compete way more directly with Spansion. Samsung will need to find a new technology to replace floating gate + they'll remain a competitor for the Nokia's of this world. I think they'll find a coexistance modus then, each with different emphasis, each with a large base in cell phones too. For next two or more years however the buffer is big and ready to get smaller.
Where you and me disagree is that you give it a higher chance that Samsung/Tosh will spark a price war, and that you see a bit more opportunity for Samsung to compete directly with Spansion towards mid range cell phones than what I'm seeing. This results in your more dire picture for Spansion: You see Spansion loose (not a good chance to make BE in H2, not a good chance to survive long term). While I see more chance of Spansion growing nicely at the cost of Numonyx for years, make BE in H2 as a result, and have a good chance long term consequently.
Regards,
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