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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Estephen who wrote (46423)	7/1/2000 5:48:42 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Samsung Electronics Records 10 Millionth RDRAM Shipment nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com June 26, 2000 (SEOUL) -- Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. said it exceeded a major milestone by shipping its 10 millionth Rambus 128Mb device since introducing the product line in the fall of 1999. The world's largest Rambus DRAM supplier, with over 80 percent market share.... If Samsung has 80% of the market then the whole market is 12.5 million RDRAM chips - ever made. It takes 8 chips to make a RIMM (in present configurations) and some PCs were shipped with more than one RIMM (though not many) so lets say enough Rambus was made for 1.5 million PCs in the first half of the year. I don't think much of anything was sold until this year, so let's count all of it as this years sales. There were about 80 million PCs sold in the first half (64 million INTC, 14 million AMD, and a few million cyrix, winchip, etc.) so it sounds like almost 2% of sales went to Rambus, but now we find out that Intel is dumping enough free RIMMs on Gateway from the stockpile it built up that Gateway has created a new (temporary) line for them. So what is the market share attributable to actual Rambus sales? 1%? Less? Paid circulation as they say in the magazine biz. What were you expecting it to be? 15%? 9%? 7? There's always the blackmail to fall back on, but now it turns out Hitachi settled only because they were leaving the DRAM business anyway and both VIA and Micron have told Rambus to cut the crap and go away. If rambus pulls off the blackmail, it'll be worth about what it's selling for now - but I would expect the stock price to triple or better. That news would just sound so good. But the blackmail is all that's left now, and if it starts to look iffy Rambus is headed for single digits. So both long and short strategies have good prospects on this stock. I think Scumbria has the best strategy with his straddle. Dan

To: Estephen who wrote (46423)	7/1/2000 7:51:09 PM
From: Estephen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Geoffrey Moore posted a message on the GG listserve today in which he discussed the parallels between RMBS today and QCOM last year. Here's a snippet: ...parallels between market reaction and adoption of Qualcomm and Rambus. In both cases the companies showed up with blocking patents in key technologies. In both cases the industry required to license these patents has done everything it possibly could to wriggle off the hook. In neither case do they appear to have succeeded. I just saw a squib yesterday that Intel shut down its "bridge" chip operation, after losing $250M on it--this was to be a substitute technology for Rambus. Now RDRAM is the only supported solution in the architecture plan, I believe. This would appear to solidify their gorilla anchor. He went on to address the issue of "gorilla adjacency power," which he defines as "the ability of a gorilla to muscle into adjacent markets." The question now is, will a value chain consolidate around Rambus technology for other memory applications (aside from PCs)? From his comments, it sounds to me as if Moore believes the game is already over as far as PC memory is concerned, and although he didn't state it flat-out, it sounds like he's calling Rambus a bona fide gorilla at this time. It's interesting to me that he seems to be making the call much earlier for Rambus than he did for Qualcomm. messages.yahoo.com