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To: Tumbleweed who wrote (12580)	7/6/2000 7:07:48 AM
From: Allegoria	Respond to of 60323

Flash: Analysts expect chip shortages to continue perhaps even beyond 2002, into 2003 or 2004. Potential relief in the Flash market is even less likely, according to NECX flash and SRAM memory commodity manager, Paul Zecher. Ref: semiconductoronline.com “Industry analysts are expecting the flash shortage to last well into 2001 and possibly 2002. As a result, this will slow up the availability of wireless communication devices such as cell phones and palm computers,” he said. Reports that Nintendo will experience shortages of Game Boys by sometime this summer or fall are already beginning to surface. Adding insult to injury, Zecher said that digital set top boxes will only compound the Flash crunch as they start coming to market sometime this year. “$39 and $59 cell phones are going to become more like $59-plus phones now that a $3 dollar chip is going for $30,” he added. Despite Intel’s announcement that they will convert at least one MMX factory to Flash production and Fujitsu/AMD’s intention to build another $1.9 billion Flash fab, analysts expect chip shortages to continue across all densities – perhaps even beyond 2002, into 2003 or 2004. “As long as they keep developing new technology that’s wireless, and more and more people switch over to Internet telephones, there’s definitely going to be a shortage in flash memory and all transistors, capacitors and other components that go with them,” Zecher said. Although Flash leaders Intel and AMD have not announced any intention to increase prices since the 33 percent hike in late 1999, NECX experts say that companies searching the open market may even have to pay more by this fall than the current triple or quadruple prices on Flash Ics

To: Tumbleweed who wrote (12580)	7/6/2000 9:47:21 AM
From: Ausdauer	Respond to of 60323

PDA Wars...it is so reminiscent of the digital camera wars just a few years back. Message 14000049 Many analysts had expected that Palm would settle on the CompactFlash format and were surprised by the Santa Clara, California-based company's decision to used the SD card format. However, Alan Kessler, chief operating officer at Palm told ComputerWire that the company has entirely rejected a generic industry consortium-developed interface which it might have used for its devices: "we're not going to support CompactFlash, no way." He described the CF specification as an old technology and said that the postage stamp size SD cards offered the "smallest, most elegant solution." He also dismissed the possibility of the SD card format not being well supported by the industry. "Look at the companies behind it," he said. Matsushita, SanDisk and Toshiba originally developed the SD specification. Scannell thinks that Palm's 70% or 80% share of the handheld market will mean that SD cards will get accepted as the industry standard. However, Gold claims that CompactFlash is already well on the way to becoming a de-facto expansion slot in the mobile market as it already used by Compaq and HP in their Microsoft Pocket PC devices, as well as by Palm licensee TRG Products and most notebook PC manufacturers. "There's so much stuff out there already," Gold said, noting that you can buy CF modems for handhelds today. Palm is expecting to launch peripherals and memory cards using the SD format early next year. My final take on this is as it has always been... ...the biggest threat to CF is SDMC/MMC. Let the games begin. Ausdauer