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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ausdauer who wrote (7364)	10/7/1999 2:44:00 AM
From: Binx Bolling	Respond to of 60323

Rio and Nomad dripping out? zdnet.com techweb.com

To: Ausdauer who wrote (7364)	10/7/1999 9:07:00 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 60323

In addition to digital cameras, music players, and palm type computers, it's likely the multimedia card will become the memory of choice for digital cellular phones designed for accessing web sites, e-mail, and fax. The characteristics which rule out other choices are: low power requirement, no moving parts (therefore long lasting and practically indestructible), and non-volatile (in contrast to DRAMs). Cost comparisons, such as dollars per mbyte capacity, between flash memory and conventional disk drives (including the Microdrive and the Clik) are not particularly useful because the characteristics of flash memory define new applications that are pretty much unsuitable for conventional disk storage. To say that the present prices for flash memory are too high and will eventually come down is like saying that each microprocessor chip brought out by Intel in the last 10 years was too expensive for Intel to make a decent profit. As to the proprietary technology itself, a key issue, not entirely resolved yet, is whether flash memory is just a commodity or whether the devices produced by SanDisk contain sufficient intellectual property to make them unique and therefore immune from competition from cut rate suppliers. The Lexar infringement suit ought to answer this question. And if it goes in favor of SanDisk, given the growth in demand for flash memory, SNDK shares will at least triple in a year. That's a prediction based on experience with other companies with bonafide proprietary technology.