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To: Sam Citron who wrote (27034)	11/27/2004 6:54:42 PM
From: Howard R. Hansen	Respond to of 60323

What ever happened to Intel? The following article is from Ziff Davis Intel climbs flash rankings as market dips By Michael Kanellos CNET News.com November 16, 2004, 1:00 PM In flash memory, Intel went from first to fourth and is now second. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant climbed back up the rankings in the flash memory market in the third quarter, according to research firm iSuppli, thanks to its pricing strategy. Starting late last year, Intel replaced executives and put new programs in place to stem a slide from first to fourth place that began in the middle of 2003. Intel pulled in $639 million in flash revenue during the third quarter, up 8.9 percent from the second quarter, to account for 16 percent of the flash memory sold worldwide. Samsung retained the overall crown by selling $990 million worth of flash, 3.3 percent more than the previous quarter. Samsung's sales accounted for 24.8 percent of the market. "Intel has been mounting a remarkable resurgence in 2004 by using aggressive marketing and pricing strategies," iSuppli said. Intense competition on price reduced the size of the overall market. Only $4.2 billion worth of flash memory was sold in the third quarter, 4 percent less than in the previous quarter. The decline marks the first sequential quarterly decrease since the first quarter of 2003. In third place, Toshiba commanded 14.6 percent of the market, seeing revenues grow by only 1 percent to hit $582 million. Spansion, a joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices and Fujitsu, meanwhile, saw sales sink. Revenue came to $538 million, a 20.1 percent drop from the second quarter. Spansion's market share dropped to 13.5 percent. Last week, Bertrand Cambou, chief executive of Spansion, attributed the losses to excess inventory, adding that the company has signed deals with nine of the 10 largest cell phone makers. Renesas Technology, Sharp Electronics, STMicroelectronics and others also saw declines. Flash companies are also prepping for a next generation of devices that will widen competition. Currently, Intel and Spansion make NOR flash memory, used to store code in cell phones and networking equipment. Samsung and Toshiba produce NAND flash, which is cheaper but not as fast at retrieving data. NAND chips get incorporated into flash cards. Spansion has disclosed plans to come out with a NOR chip that comes with a NAND interface (and is as cheap as NAND) to be slotted into memory cards. Meanwhile, Samsung has revealed plans to produce a fast NAND chip with a NOR interface. The following article is from Global Sources Leading flash vendors suffer 4 percent drop in revenues Posted : November 24, 2004 United States – An over-supply of NAND flash led to price erosion and a fall in revenues for the overall flash memory sector in Q3 2004, according to research firm iSuppli.Flash revenues of $4.2 billion in Q2 2004 slipped to $3.99 billion in Q3, representing a 4 percent drop and the first quarter-on-quarter decline since Q1 2003. The world's leading flash vendor is South Korea's Samsung, which holds 24.8 percent market share in the NAND flash memory market. Samsung reaped Q3 revenues of $990 million, and is reported to hold fifth place in the NOR flash market. Second place in the global NAND flash market goes to Intel, with market share of 16 percent and Q3 revenues of $639 million. Intel is closely followed by Toshiba, which has 14.6 percent share and Q3 revenues of $582 million. Despite brisk growth in unit sales, prices have eroded as competition has intensified. Greater competition and further price erosion are likely in early 2005, according to iSuppli.