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

To: Ausdauer who wrote (13402)	7/29/2000 3:23:32 AM
From: Michael Kim	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 60323

Now the conversation has become very thought-provoking. Aus, I've appropriated two of your headings in your previous post... Bluetooth I am trying to imagine a day when it would be possible to "beam" my digital photo into my PC or directly to my printer via Bluetooth. Would I prefer this to removable flash? The answer would have to be dependent on the speed and reliability of the wireless transfer. Remember that we are talking photos in this case, not exactly the kind of data that you're willing to tolerate a lot of loss or noise. Also, as digicams increase in resolution (I recall that increasing the resolution produces an exponential or logrithmic scaling of the memory required) the data files will be much larger for transfer. Bluetooth transfers at 725 kbit/s and may be subject to a variety of environmental conditions that may impact the reliability of the transfer. I am NOT going to sit there beaming my files for more than a couple minutes - tops! This would not be preferable. This setup might be ok for a digital voice transmission that we've all been conditioned to accept static and dropouts on, but - c'mon - not on the naked pictures of my girlfriend! However, in a perfect world where wireless transmission is fast, secure, and reliable - I would have to say that I would prefer it over a hardwired connection. Wireless would simply be so much more convenient. BUT I think that we have years to get to that point, nevertheless IMHO all SNDK longs should consider the very long term disruptive impact of perfected wireless data transfer. Cost & Design Considerations With respect to the Bluetooth discussion above, I have read that Bluetooth enabling devices will increase prices $70 more at retail. Most digicams seem to be shipping with 8-16mb cards, which are cheaper than that. Flash allows the OEM's to control their unit prices better, which gives CF an advantage over embedded flash. Nikon could ship the Coolpix 990 with a 192mb flash card - but that would add hundreds of dollars to the price, so it ships with less. Certainly a camera capable of over 3 mp of resolution deserves much more memory. Using embedded would require installing a respectable amount of memory because consumers would demand it, and that would build in a much higher cost per unit. Removable CF allows the OEM to ship the cheapest capacity and bring their unit retail price down, while the consumer can then choose what size card they ultimately need/want and do a follow-on purchase. That is absolutely great for SNDK. Virtually any digicam of 2.11 megapixels or better should be an automatic two CF sale one with the OEM, and one at retail. Repeat sales Now my question is: how many flash cards will I need? I am a gadget junkie, but now that I have a 48mb CF in my Coolpix, I have yet to take it out. I shoot my pics, then hook the camera up for a download and clear the card - ready for another shoot. Now this will all change since I just got my SanDisk Imagemate USB reader - but here I will just be taking the card out to download it and clear it. Then it goes back in. From there I would archive those naked pictures of my girlfriend onto a CD-ROM - CF is still way to expensive to justify using it as a backup. CD's cost less than $0.50. So why do I need another CF card? Sure if I have another device, i.e. cellphone, Palm Pilot, I would most likely have dedicated CF for each, but would I need more than one per? The question I'm leading up to is this: How strong will the demand be for CF beyond the initial purchase? And how important is removability? This post is chock full of opinions and conjecture - take them at face value. I'm not an electrical engineer, nor have I made millions in the stock market - yet. I am long and very bullish on SNDK because I can't help but believe that removable, non-volatile, low-power memory that fits in the palm of your hand will change the world. I'm just not sure of all the ways this will happen, and perhaps the true "killer app" for CF has yet to emerge. I'm basically asking some questions out loud from a compact flash consumer standpoint and for a dialogue to allow me to understand the size of the potential market better. This has been my longest post on this thread, I hope someone finds it useful. MK

To: Ausdauer who wrote (13402)	7/29/2000 5:40:59 AM
From: thecalculator	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

IP Detective Work Hey Aus, do you think you could include in your detective work the task of determining the potential participation in the market of a new flash memory standard invented by Dr. Boaz Eitan of Saifun? saifun.com Dr. Eitan seems to be playing it extremely low key and close to the vest, so all we can ascertain is from sketchy media reports, chit-chat message board talk, and some of Dr. Eitan's past patent history. In addition, the CEO of Tower Semiconductor has recently made some interesting statements regarding the Saifun technology and their microFLASH(R) implementation of it, and there were some comments about it made by Dr. Harari in the joint Tower/SanDisk conference call. On the TSEM yahoo message board, it has been suggested that FASL, the joint AMD/Fujitsu venture, is signing up to license Saifun technology...and you do have an idea how big flash memory is to AMD, do you not? Besides, this question does seem to be fairly germane to SanDisk, since SanDisk may potentially own 20% of Tower Semiconductor, which in turn owns 14% of Saifun plus certain manufacturing rights to the technology. One more thing to include in your investigation, should you accept the task, is an evaluation of the last paragraph of this post messages.yahoo.com , where the author writes: ...SSTI's LARGEST product is only 2 megaBITS while DOC goes up to 288 mega BYTES, that the ratio of BYTES to BITS (in this case) is 4:1 (we discussed all this before including 4882, 4886, 4887, 5214) and pointed out that FLSH's NAND products write at speeds of 24 mega(million)BYTES per second ... while SSTI's NOR flash writes at speeds rated in kilo(thousand)BITS per second. This advantage will be insurmountable in applications involving mass data transfers such as 3G wireless devices, smartphones, IAD devices and the Internet Infrastructure market. Hasn't anyone noticed that SNDK's LATEST and LARGEST investments... with Toshiba in Virginia and Tower in Israel have been departures from their all NOR flash position? Can you now guess why? Regards, thecalculator

To: Ausdauer who wrote (13402)	7/31/2000 6:47:08 PM
From: hueyone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Aus wrote: I think the fact that the SSTI ADC uses off-the-shelf ultra-high density NAND flash (as does FLSH's DOC) indicates SanDisk's advantageous position. Should SanDisk see their flash card business eroded by embedded applications they could easily migrate to embedded products. They have all of the pieces of the puzzle available to them and could easily position themselves as a low cost producer. Aus, as you know, the ADC chip will be a single module combination of both high density NAND type flash and low density NOR type flash. While SSTI does indeed purchase the NAND flash component off the shelf from Samsung and Toshiba, SSTI will produce the embedded controller of this single module device using its patented NOR type Superflash technology. The controller, like other low density NOR flash produced using SSTI's patented Superflash technology, will be a high margin item for SSTI. I suspect the conclusion that SNDK has all the pieces of the puzzle and could easily position itself as a low cost producer in this embedded market segment is not a given. If SNDK were to enter this market, they might end up purchasing the low density controller component from SSTI, just like SSTI is purchasing the high density NAND component of the modules from Samsung and Toshiba. Having said that, I don't see SSTI's ADC chip slowing down SNDK's removable flash card business any time in the near future. I also don't see any competitor eroding SSTI's core business of low density NOR type flash and embedded controller chips any time in the near future. That is why I am invested in both companies. JMHO and best to all, Huey