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

To: Ausdauer who wrote (14292)	8/25/2000 3:11:50 PM
From: limtex	Respond to of 60323

Aus - Just got Road Runner and am hooked on the internet even more than I was before! Worse still hooked on Napster. I got almost all the popular music that I liked in my life!! Now can you pls reccommend me an MP3 player to go around with. Preferably latest and best. Best regards, L

To: Ausdauer who wrote (14292)	8/25/2000 3:44:37 PM
From: hueyone	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 60323

Aus, the fact that SST signed a cross license agreement with Sandisk a couple of years ago does not warrant SST being relegated to a list of Sandisk sub assemblers for Sandisk Compact Flash. Obviously, SST does more than assemble Flash Cards using Sandisk technology or SST would not be achieving double the write speeds for Compact Flash cards than Sandisk is currently able to do . As you know, flash memory speed is crucial to digital cameras because flash memory determines the rate at which a digital camera can take consecutive shots. Also, you and I have previously agreed that SST buys their high density NAND flash from Toshiba, Hitachi, and Samsung, not Sandisk. I also suspect SST uses it own controller technology. Yes, Sandisk gets some license revenue from SSTI, but whether it is significant amount, and whether SSTI gets a license fee from Sandisk as part of the cross license agreement, we still do not know. The people on this board literally have multiple orgasms over Sandisk cross licensing agreements. But since all of these agreements are covered by NDAs (non disclosure agreements), the strength of these many cross licensing agreements and net benefit to Sandisk in each case is far from clear. Yes Sandkisk appears to have good IP and excellent R&D, but I doubt Sandisk will be just as successful if consumers buy products from competitors that have some sort of cross license agreement with Sandisk than if customers buy the products from Sandisk itself. And then there is always the ever present risk of designing around Sandkisk patents. Hopefully Lexar will not be successful in their attempt to do just that. Is Sandisk a good bet for a long term flash investment? I think so; I own it. Is Sandisk a better pure play investment in flash than SSTI right now? This remains to be seen. Sandisk does have a more diverse stable of patents, but I would not be surprised to see SSTI's quarterly product revenues pass by Sandisk's in the next twelve months. It is entirely possible that the market for low density code storage is growing faster than the market for high density data storage. In addition, SST has a margin of safety built in to their low stock price relative to forward EPS and earnings growth expectations that Sandisk does not have. Finally, SSTI has a patented proprietary technology, SuperFlash, that I believe separates SSTI from the "low end commodity" phrase that you like to use when characterizing the low density flash market. Time will tell the strength of the various flash player's IP, but in the meantime I am quite willing to sit on a flash basket with Intel, Sandisk and SSTI while the tornado swirls. If SSTI should stumble, or God forbid, the mighty Sandisk stumbles, I will likely sell the one and reinforce the other. Best, Huey

To: Ausdauer who wrote (14292)	8/26/2000 1:16:58 AM
From: techreports	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

As Art already replied, we are talking about the high-end, leading edge ultra-high density flash memory used in flash memory cards, not the low-end embedded commodity market. Aus, right now this market isn't a commodity like the low end, but it could. Look at the PC processor market. Sure seems like Intel and AMD compete on price and speed. Every now and then, Intel comes along and introduces some thing like MMX and changes the game. Intel is currently pushing RDRAM into the market and that'll give them an advantage till AMD catches up again. As has been stated multiple times, Intel exited this market because it could not compete with SNDK. I don't believe AMD ever had a removable card product line. Hmm...i don't know if i believe this. How could Intel not compete? If Sandisk is such a tough competitor, how come they only have 28% market share? Not gorilla like? NTAP has over 60% share. Cree has over 90% share of SiC. QCOM owns CDMA, ect..ect... Whats your thoughts? Aus, I believe it was last October at the CC, Eli mentioned he thought the MemoryStick would be subject to royalties. Interesting..it seems Sandisk is in the same position as Rambus or QCOM. Ausdauer, is it likely that Sandisk will get royalties on all in flash memory cards? I think they're currently getting around 24 million in royalties.