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Politics : RAMTRONIAN's Cache Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pat mudge who wrote (7177)	12/18/1999 6:41:00 PM
From: Gutterball	Respond to of 14464

Ramtron farted around with Gemplus a couple years ago, along with Bull. Both are French companies. There was a time when folks were hoping Gemplus would take Ramtron down off its cross but they never did. Everybody is in it for themselves it seems, so I wouldn't put too much trust in Gemplus or any other company Ramtron might partner with. Speaking of which, recall that recent announcement Cubic Corp made about those FRAM chips they were buying from Fujitsu for their transit cards #reply-12328673, well, in the beginning, Cubic BOT its FRAM from Ramtron. I seem to recall, Fujitsu gave Ramtron $20 million a while back to upgrade its fab/lab. If I didn't know any better, I'd guess Ramtron gave up a call on Fjuitsu's FRAM which it could have sold to Cubic in order to upgrade its foundry. Of course, Ramtron still has a royalty, but had they exercised their call and sold the chips to Cubic instead, they would have kept the whole enchilada and made more money. This suggests Ramtron is still negotiating from weakness. You can argue they now have their foundry and can produce their own chips, etc., but semis are a cyclical business and a weak company doesn't need this risk. They were better off with the call so they wouldn't have to worry about slugging it out with the big boys in a down market. A big ego will get you in trouble every time. BTW, here's to another round of options for all the boys at Ramtron this Christmas, they're doing such a great job!