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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Tony Viola who wrote (2934)6/22/1999 11:31:00 AM
From: Teflon  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 54805
 
Tony, you won't see me buying RMBS stock either. Aside from the technical issues that you raised so efficiently, the Street just does not believe in the RMBS story.

So regardless of how many of Moore's checklist standards RMBS may indeed satisfy, this is just not a stock that I want to own. The other problem I have is that DRAM Memory and the next generation levels that are built out by RMBS are somewhat invisible to the consumer. To me, that means there is little preventing an Intel or anyone else for that matter from switching from a RMBS platform to an alternative.

And in the world of Memory, there will be alternatives down the road.

Teflon



To: Tony Viola who wrote (2934)6/22/1999 11:32:00 AM
From: Uncle Frank  Respond to of 54805
 
Great summary of Rambus, Tony. All of those thoughts have crossed my mind, but I never put them together in cohesive form. As you know I work for a memory house, and I can tell you the boys back in Asia would do about anything to get out of the Rambus IPR box. Imo they're giving the product less than half hearted support until they figure out how to do so.

Personally, I think rmbs will lose, and since their stock is so high, I've considered buying leap puts. Otoh, there's the might of Intel behind them.

I think I'll watch this drama unfold from the sidelines. There are easier plays out there.

Frank



To: Tony Viola who wrote (2934)6/22/1999 11:37:00 AM
From: LindyBill  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 54805
 
Teflon, et al, about Rambus. I'm going to play the devil's advocate for once on a semiconductor/PC or server related issue.

Thanks, Tony, for a great breakdown. This is the kind of plus and minus info we need. I posted a "war warning" on Intel in Feb, as I recall, I did not like the outlook with the price wars.

This is another good reason for watch and wait on Rambus, IMO. Those of you in it may be right, and can needle us a year from now, but I am going to remain timid on this one.

We continue to get great movement on Q. I guess the Fund Managers have finally figured out the earnings that Mike Buckley had figured out for us 2 months ago.



To: Tony Viola who wrote (2934)6/22/1999 1:33:00 PM
From: Apollo  Respond to of 54805
 
Tony (and to thread):

Great posts, well articulated. It will be a fun drama to watch unfold.

Insofar as Rambus being a one-trick pony, this may at present be true. But unlike Iomega and zips/jaz drives, the one trick has potentially very far reaching implications, I think, including well beyond PCs. Still, one will want to wait and see what other tricks, if any, evolve from Rambus. Many other great companies started out as single-tricks......MSFT/dos; CSCO/routers; Qcom/cell phones; INTC/memory, etc. Also, you point out that memory chips are ever cheaper, and therefore with decreasing margins to manufacturers. Falling prices may be true, but it seems to me that the uses for memory chips are expanding at the same time that margins are narrowing, perhaps resulting in the need for more and more memory chips.

Also, I like your comments on Intel. Looks like, similar to MSFT, they are remaking themselves at this new inflection point of microprocessors, AMD competition and falling ASPS. They seem to be moving into non-PC chips, DSPs, set-top boxes, and even a little CMGI-like by investing in a big basket of startups and other high tech companies (including Rambus <g>).

I am new to the thread and am still learning thread etiquette. Hope occasional posts on Rambus don't seem too evangelical, and are helpful, particularly to the less well initiated. Devil's advocate posts are certainly helpful to me, although they make me a little nervous.

Thanx, Stan



To: Tony Viola who wrote (2934)6/22/1999 2:21:00 PM
From: Apollo  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 54805
 
Tony:

Took the liberty of re-posting your excellent remarks on Rambus thread, and got this response below; bringing it here for others. I know you already know this.

Stan
_____________________________________

To: Snasraway (23315 )
From: john douglas Tuesday, Jun 22 1999 2:06PM ET
Reply # of 23319

Two thoughts on Rambus being 3 years late.

First, perhaps we are temporarily in a valley where the current top-of-the-line hardware platforms deliver more performance than is needed by most users. This does not bother me. While I can't predict which particular killer application yet to be developed will drive Pentium IV chips and Rambus memory, I have no doubt it will arrive sooner than we expect. Better voice recognition, streaming IP-based movie rentals, high quality video telephony. Your guess is better than mine. The older software engineers will recall that when MSFT developed DOS for the original IBM PC, the architecture limited memory to 640K, because no-one could possibly conceive a PC would need more memory than that. So where are we now? 64 Meg RAM is standard. The IBM/MSFT forecast was off by a multiple of 100.

Second, don't worry about competition in the game console market. Nintendo and Sony already sell their N64 and Playstations at a loss. What they care about is market share, so that they can make the profit on the game units sold. And with an 11-year old and a 13-year old in the house, I can tell you that game console performance does matter. Nintendo and Sony will pay whatever they must to put the best technology on the store shelf.

Just my $0.02.