Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: limtex who wrote (15215)	9/30/2000 9:18:40 PM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

PDA stocks are hot right now. I posted yesterday about the valuations of some of the pure-plays in this area. Message 14485752 Technology Investor magazine did a piece last month on PDA's and included in the discussion the "chips and guts" suppliers for the PDA market which included Flextronics, AMD, SanDisk and Three Five Systems. Unit sales by 2003 are expected to be about 16 million. Right now Palm/Handspring have the lion's share of the market. The breakdown by unit sales is Palm 53.1%, Hanspring 34.5%, HP 5.3%, Casio 2.2% and Compaq 1.3%. The last three companies support Pocket PC and CompactFlash. The interesting statements I read were as follows... Will Handspring eventually hurt Palm's hardware sales, which account for more than 90% of its revenues? Michael Mace (Palm's Chief Competitive Officer) admits it will. Palm makes $100 gross profit when it sells a $250 Palm. It gets $12 if the same person buys a Visor, says Merrill Lynch. So why license its OS and open the door to competitors? One word: "Apple". [snip] Handspring has definitely forced Palm to innovate. In August, Palm introduced the $149 m100 to better compete on price with the Visor. The m100 is 25% smaller than the Palm V and has a smaller screen. Next year it will incorporate into every Palm a Secure Digital (SD) slot, established by Toshiba, SanDisk and Matsushita. The SD slot will accept flash memory storage cards and enable add-ons like MP3 players and digital cameras. The move highlights the potential conflict that can arise from Palm's licensing business. The SD slot competes against, and isn't compatible with, the Springboard from Handspring and Memorys Sticks from Sony, both Palm OS licensees. I think a good hedge is a CF and MMC/SDMC adapter for Handspring's devices. Already some module manufacturers are using MMC as Rocky has posted. Best, Aus