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

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (17843)	12/31/2000 8:43:33 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Funny, I always assumed the name meant "San", as in "without", and "Disk", as in somehow meaning hard drive. So without hard drive was my thought on the name. I bet if you asked 100 people what country SanDisk was from, 80% would say Japan, the name just sounds Japanese to me. John

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (17843)	12/31/2000 12:03:24 PM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (8) \| Respond to of 60323

I purchased two Christmas gifts for myself this year. First, out of interest, I purchased an HP 64MB CompactFlash card. The packaging was just great. It is identical in form to a SanDisk package, but with a photo of a guy on a cell phone with two elephants in the back ground on the card insert. I thought it was very appealing visually. The card has an HP logo on it as well. I thought the package was very stylish. I purchased this item for $149.00 (tax and shipping included) from the HP site. The card has 4 SanDisk patents listed on the back, a sentence that states... "HP is a licensee of the CompactFlash and CF trademarks." and the code SDCFB-64, which I believe is a SanDisk ID code. I have no doubt this is a SanDisk card as it also has the typical SanDisk manufacturing code in white print on the lower left edge of the card. It is also manufactured in the USA, so I assume that this card was actually assembled for HP in Sunnyvale. It is possible that there is some contract manufacturing here within the USA by Celestica, but I think that is less likely. In any case, HP has done a great job "beautifying" the card. I hope to post a photo of the packaging later today. Second, out of paranoia, I purchased a Viking 64MB CF card from Amazon.com about 2 weeks ago. This card sold for $109.99 plus shipping. It was about $30.00 cheaper than the HP card. It shipped in a silver/gray electrostatic package. There was no attempt whatsoever to brand label the merchandise, except for the Viking logo on the card. This card was also assembled in the USA, but the label on the electrostatic protective envelope states "TOSHIBA" and a manufacturing date of November 30, 2000. And while Eli stated that the Toshiba alliance would lead to little product overlap, it is clear that Toshiba is selling raw flash to SanDisk competitors. Viking pays no '987 royalty to SanDisk. Thus, the card manufacturing costs are probably similar to SanDisk. Viking just orders the component parts and uses its manufacturing prowess to mass produce cards. SanDisk probably enjoys a small, hidden royalty from Viking that is collected from the sale of the flash chip component, but little else. Thus, unless SanDisk has cheaper sources of flash and controllers, there is probably little cost advantage over Viking. Viking also has distribution channels from prior relationships, but I have seen little product at retail. This probably explains the relatively unsophisticated packaging and reliance on e-tailers for distribution. I hope to post a picture of the Viking package as well. Aus