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Strategies & Market Trends : Steve's Channelling Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul A who wrote (4003)	8/2/2000 10:55:50 PM
From: SBHX	Respond to of 30051

Paul, Lets answer that in a roundabout way. I was in sndk 2 year ago, so I can remember the critical shortage of CF cartridges and how hard it was to get them. Anyway, digital cameras are BIG users of flash, and that is still growing exponentially (even today), the technology (basically pixel resolution in this case) is still in its infancy, and a further 16x growth in resolution is probably required (from 3.3Mpel today) for the people who still want to print 8x10 or larger prints that match a good analog camera. Add to that, the projection than 4-5 yrs from now, almost all cameras sold will be digital cameras --- This ensures a real continuous need to actually expand memory size requirement as well as more and more users of a device that is still in its infancy. Compare that against memory on PCs which has to grow only because of ever-growing-bloated OS revisions with sloppy coding. (vbg) Now the 2nd problem. Battery power really has not grown as fast as people really want, flash memory with its low power requirement has a big advantage over mechanical type storage like the ibm microdrive. If a mechanical drive could be invented that uses only marginally more power than flash. Flash will probably be destroyed, but this has not happened. Similarly, any laser based storage also draws much larger power, even if it has no mechanical parts (which is a neat trick if it can be done). Flash's biggest weakness? Too slow. Compared to those SDR/DDR/RDR write throughput, flash is actually very very close to magnetic storage like HDs. Anyway, you really have to hold a flash cartridge with a digital camera and transfer the images on a notebook via USB/pcmcia to see what I mean. It's a technology that works. As for SSTI, all digital phones have built in flash memory (perhaps up to 4MBytes(?) now). The GSM phones even require a 2nd flash memory card in the form of the SIM cards. Did not actually get into ssti until quite late, so I'm not as familiar with this guy as sndk. But it's hard to say if there's even a further +200% growth in flash stocks right now in the next 3 yrs --- 5 yrs growth seems to be priced in. I was trying to figure out the next big area after flash, and the closest I can come up with is the low-power DSL chipset field, which seems to have some potential growth. Alternately, cheap memory companies with potential to (continue to) license their core technology to big manufacturers look kind of interesting too. But stocks with low floats and low volumes are kind of hard to invest safely consistently (g). There was a time when flash was real, maybe the hype has overwhelmed the reality. edit : forgot to add, sndk earnings in yhoo includes a non-recurring $344M gain in Mar from investment in UMC foundry. This also means a potential danger in Mar2001 from people who don't read the financial statements. The actual P/E is not really that low. (Other companies in same boat : ALSC, SIII) SbH