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

To: FR1 who wrote (20506)	7/2/2001 5:31:01 PM
From: Ausdauer	Respond to of 60323

FR1, Smart Cards I have always considered smart cards as a potential market for SanDisk. Included in this category there are cell phone ID cards called SIM cards which also carry personal data and other tidbits of information which consume non-volatile memory. Message 13895631 The biggest problem with these types of applications is the need for them to be relatively inexpensive. If you think about current credit card designs there is basically a magnetic stripe for ID and a hologram to prevent illegal card reproduction. These are probably dirt cheap to manufacture. But cards with embedded flash for data storage must be significantly more expensive. This expense could impede their adoption. Also, there may not be a need for several MB of storage in these applications, so the playing field is crowded with competitors. Companies like ATML, Infineon, SSTI, STM... come to mind off the top of my head. SanDisk excels at low cost, high density flash applications, not low cost, low density flash applications. Break throughs in manufacturing costs could open a potential market for smart cards which require more and more flash memory. What applications could drive the need for flash? Perhaps biometric data such as photos or fingerprint verification. Still it is hard to conceive a disposable card of nominal value that will require large amount of flash memory. The only application that comes to mind is a portable medical record like the dog tags that SanDisk is developing for medical and military applications. This is basically an MMC card in a protective housing. The latest generation of Palm Pilots has also served as a launch point for "disposable" flash ROM cards with pre-loaded information such as city guides, GPS maps and the like. The need for such cards may increase as GPS becomes more main stream and eventually integrated into basic cell phone functionality. The added cost of a microcontroller makes truly "disposable" or dispensible applications more of a fantasy at this point. I think applications will drive the design of future smart cards. It may take a few years before we know what these potential applications might be. Aus