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

To: johnzhang who wrote (26822)	6/26/2000 4:12:00 PM
From: Apollo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Sndk, gorilla criteria...... Am I right that SNDK can become a gorilla only if CompactFlash becomes the standard/default flash memory card? yep, that's largely right. 1. Prefer an open, proprietary architecture 2. Need a tornado(es)........we have this now. 3. Discontinuous innovation......yep, CF is truly better than film, cassette tape, vhs, etc. 4. High switching costs.......yep, CF is expensive to the consumer, and if many types of electronic devices rely on CF, then why change? 5. Strong value chain formation.....yep, this is developing. 6. High barriers to entry......not clear on this yet. The SmartMedia card is a privately labeled product purchased from Toshiba to round out the product line. Message 13808089 "The final viable competitors are non-CompactFlash/non-MMC flash form factors. Included in this category is SmartMedia and the Sony Memory Stick. Because the SmartMedia card will be a FlashVision product, SanDisk is likely to benefit from the continued sale of SmartMedia. The general trend has been for increasing CompactFlash and MMC design-in wins a the expense of SmartMedia. As such, SmartMedia poses a diminishing threat to SanDisk. Likewise, The Sony Memory Stick, essentially a duplicative flash form factor which has no enhancements or advantages when compared to CompactFlash, is struggling for design-ins. In the final analysis it also remains unclear how Sony will manufacture Memory Stick given their relative lack of experience in flash memory design and lack of flash chip manufacturing capacity. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Sony may become a FlashVision customer in the future. Currently they have expressed an interest in partnering with Lexar Media for the production of Memory Stick. Because Lexar also has no flash memory fabrication capacity this relationship may offer limited production capacity to Sony.'

To: johnzhang who wrote (26822)	6/29/2000 1:17:00 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

John, Re: Handheld game Good to see you posting here again. I am wondering if you are planning to continue forward with the "Handheld Gorilla Game"? You made a superb start with these posts: # 11935 Message 12186529 # 13596 Message 12415040 Knight brought up Palm this morning ("27049) and Tom Chwojko-Frank (#27058) commented back with references to the Symbian consortium (Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Panasonic, Psion) and Microsoft who has just released CE 3.0. DownSouth added 2 good links to some new "Handhelds" shown at PCExpo 2000: geek.com geek.com There is certainly a battle shaping up between the 3 major handheld OS manufacturers and the competing OS (EPOC, CE, PALM). Palm has spun off and claims about 70 percent of the PDA market. Symbian seems to be considering an IPO. Microsoft is opening up parts of the CE source code and licensing CE at discounts of up to 50 percent depending on the length and volume of a contract. David Smith, an analyst with Gartner Group, recently noted: "Given that CE has been less than enthusiastically accepted, those are the kind of things you'd expect - price discounts to get market share and opening the source code." totaltele.com Perhaps you might want to consider updating your last "Handheld Game" update (time permitting of course)? That might encourage the thread to take this subject forward. - Eric -