Ausdauer,
The issue I raised is simply this: If company A has a patented product for which there is no real alternative, then company A has a virtual control over the market for products using that patented feature. If company B has a different patented product that can be substituted for company A's product, then A's product could become less valuable. Another analogy is from Warren Buffett. He regards cities with one single newspaper to be a far more valuable franchise than cities with more than one competing newspaper. The first situation is like a monopoly and produces much higher profits. This was Buffett's thinking about 20 years ago when he purchased a huge position in the Washington Post newspaper, and also, about the same time, bought the Buffalo Evening News (which had a competitor). By starting a Sunday edition in Buffalo and taking pains to spell people's names correctly, the afternoon Buffalo paper soon dominated the market, and the morning paper eventually went out of business. If someone produces a better flash memory than SanDisk, at a lower price, and not using SanDisk patents, then the profit picture would be far worse than it is. Sounds to me as if SanDisk, regardless of whether its patents are solid, at least has better manufacturing capability to come up with higher density memories, and this alone should keep SNDK in the lead. Art |
