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Technology Stocks : ATI Technologies in 1997 (T.ATY) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sleeperz who wrote (3923)	8/25/1999 9:15:00 AM
From: SBHX	Respond to of 5927

-OT-. Compact flash. Do I feel bad I didn't sell my houses and that damn boat and everything else I own and borrow tens of millions and bought SNDK at $6? Of course I do, but the same way I feel sad about not buying the powerball lottery with the number that came up. Can't win them all or time them perfectly, but coming in at various stages of the rising curve still is going to keep that portfolio growing. My target is only a 50% growth every year, so far, even with some recent losses, I'm still above that (knock on wood) this yr. Yes it would be bad form to mention SNDK now. You shoulda brought it up back when it was $6 last year not now. Too little too late I'm afraid. :-) I shoulda backed up the semitruck last year instead of the minivan. Intel has their own format as does Sony and others. In the end its a VHS vs Beta. Here's the market share in 1997. With recent announcement by (smartmedia stalwarts) ricoh and olympus to support CF (Smartmedia is the only credible flash ram competition), I expect CF market share to grow. compactflash.org As for sony, the sony memory-stick has a 64MB version, which is ahead of 32MB-max smartmedia but below the 96MB-max (so far) CF. But its weakness is that it is a proprietary format. If you remember, sony is the inventor of betamax, so I expect this one to end up the same way. Wide-multi-vendor-market-aceptance on the CF side, one proprietary format on the sony side. The outcome is not hard to predict. Now onto other emerging technolgies, it looks like ADSL is ready to take off. Who is going to be the winner here when ADSL modems hit the retail market. I know very little about ADSL here. I do like the cable modem a lot so far, except for the problems in the backbone itself that causes response time to go through the roof. I expect the ADSL will probably make some people money, like any good new technology. Good luck, but tell me if you see something that will make a buck. But I'll explain a bit why I'm so enthusiastic about the CF market itself. Which would you rather make : the shaver or the blades? This is why the chips market, the ADSl modems, even the settop box, while still very lucrative, may not have as much sustained legs as something like the CF flashram. Even reuseable, the CF flashram could go into many portable devices that runs on batteries and needs to store lots of data. Don't be surprised if RIMM eventually makes a CF compatible version. If you can replace the picture frame with an LCD version that reads CFs. Would you get some (if it is cheap enough?)? Now, if SNDK didn't have any IPs that was defendable, there would be no barrier to competition, and they'd be dead ducks by now, but they do, and they're very much alive. The key to understanding SNDK is not the flashram aspect, but the form factor of the recordable media : the package makes the product, the flashram is only the technology. Pretty much like the magnetic recordable tape is interesting, but it took 8-track->casette-tape and eventually harddisk to make it a real product. Speak now and be a guru later. Huh, I don't get it CR, all I do is try to research the business model and industry of each company I invest in. Sometimes, it's a hit, sometimes, I make mistakes. That has nothing to do with trying or being a guru. I'll admit I'm guilty of occasionally saying good things about stocks I own, hoping to pull in more (ahem) unsuspecting suckers :) ). Truth be known, I have very little pride, I'll grovel a little :) if there's money in it. If I have to be a guru, let it be of a cult where people give me lots and lots of money so I can do some (ahem) charitable work. :)