LindyBill:
I am reading "The Millionare Next Door", at the moment, and am going to put up some comments on their conclusions. We all seem to be a bit different than their prototype.
Sidebar: I wonder if RMBS could turn out to be a IOMEGA
The Millionaire Next Door.......great book, plenty of data, illuminating. The major theme is about saving and frugality, as opposed to generating ever greater revenues, or inheritance.
As for your Rambus to Iomega reflection, Ok I'll take the bait........one of the reasons I posted the PC era article earlier today is because investing in a memory designer like Rambus might be less than spectacular if the industry is in a declining mode. However, my gut instinct tells me the PC era is not over and won't be for some years. To reach 90% household penetration, the PC needs 2 things: 1) speech recognition so that non-typists can quickly communicate with their computer, and 2) an operating system that doesn't crash, or easily restores its original settings. Speech recognition isn't ready for Prime-time yet, having only about 85-93% accuracy, especially for those of us who slur their words such as myself......but it is close. The OS is getting better; I haven't had to reinstall Windows 98 once on any of my 3 computers in the past year. Even for those households in which the Father/Mother are not computer literate, the kids will force introduction of a PC into the house, and probably teach the parents. Also, I would think peer pressure in the neighborhood would result in PCs being purchased in some homes. Finally, even if one doesn't tackle learning a computer at home, so many jobs, even low-end, require learning some computer skills at work. Learning some PC familiarity at work will make it less intimidating to get a PC at home. I don't remember, for instance, the last time I saw a real cash register in a business.
My expectation is that PCs will reach nearly all homes as the PC becomes more reliable and easier to use. Intel and MS are still pretty dependent on the PC, and I would think that they will continue to push software/hardware developers, etc. in the direction of easy to use PCs. The other comment made today was how one defines a PC. Sony's Playstation 2 is said to be a PC substitute, combining the fun of games with electronics controls and internet access, with the familiar TV as a monitor. I suspect that Sony will try to reach non PC households with this device, packaged in a simple to use way.
I never invested in IOMEGA, but I understand it to be the maker of fast PC storage, ie Zips and Jazz drives. Iomega was not able to make these the standard for portable storage, and to replace the floppy. They couldn't get boxmakers or and others to give them exclusivity. During their window of opportunity, others invaded their space, with the same and other media (CD, Superdisks, Sony, DVD, etc.). So their market penetration was suboptimal and their competition grew and grew. I don't think they have blazed any other meaningful trails in the past 4 years.
Rambus should become the memory standard for all PCs within 3 years or so. Thru Intel, they will have relative exclusivity. It is unlikely there will be other memory standards in 2 years. SDRAM-133 is thought to have a parallel lifetime of maybe 6-12 months, to be generous. Rambus is thought to have a design that allows upscaling that may be indefinite for the short-term (3-5 years). It meets the needs of future processors now. Nothing else exists that does that. Hence, future processors are being tailored to Direct Rambus DRAM. This sort of design effort further cements the linkage between Rambus, Intel and others (graphics card designers, etc.) for the future. So, unlike Iomega, their is little competition now or on the horizon.
Further, unlike Iomega, Rambus DRAM is not restricted to PCs. PCs are expected to be only 35-50% of the potential RAMBUS market. Sony Playstations will have Rambus memory (only Rambus memory); same for Nintendo. Servers and Workstations will be Intel/Rambus. Graphics card makers, high definition TV, high-end printers/copiers, etc.
Finally, Iomega is a storage maker; Rambus is a memory designer. Rambus gets royalties, and has little overhead. Similar to MSFT in some ways, and very much like Q.
To recapitulate, the optimistic view of Rambus is that PC market penetration will be vastly greater than that of iomega, and its utility will be in many markets, not just one.
That's how the Pro-Rambus side sees it. We'll know about a year from now. LindyBill doesn't like "one-trick ponies". Rambus, at this point, is still a one-trick pony....it purportedly has many patents, but we'll see what if any other trails it blazes. To be fair, it's pretty early in the game for Rambus, so we'll give them a few years and see what else emerges.
Thanx to Mike Buckley, Lucious, LindyBill and the thread for a good discussion today. God Bless America.
Stan |
