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Technology Stocks : Oak Technology (OAKT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jack Whitley who wrote (3884)	1/27/1998 10:51:00 AM
From: slob	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4335

I would not worry about Hollywood, DVD's growth will be in China! Look at where VCD took off, I've never even seen a VCD player in the US. China and to some extent India are markets where DVD players will be very popular. This is part of the reason why sub $100 is so important. I personally think that a lot of the manufactures are missing this market and aiming DVD at "US Home Theater" when all thats important (initially) is a stereo output and NTSC/PAL encoded video. slob

To: Jack Whitley who wrote (3884)	1/27/1998 11:09:00 AM
From: AreWeThereYet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4335

Jack, >> In regard to DVD, I am more concerned with the standards battle going on. << This won't affect OAKT a lot. OAKT's DVD products are for DVD-ROM and DVD-Player. Both standard are well established. The problem is the DVD-RAM standard but DVD-RAM won't take off until 1999 (product will be available in next few months for around $800) but DVD-ROM will take-off as soon as mid 1998. Actaully the slower DVD-ROM take off, the better OAKT is since it is still the dominate supplier of ATAPI CD-ROM controller, there is roughly 60-70M (my guess) systems ship in 1997 and 60% use OAK. The Sub-$800 PC era will certainly have pressure on ASP but also help increase sale volume. >> Are all they have now CD ROM controller chips ? << OAKT has a very diverified product base, the problem is more than half of its revenue are rely CD-ROM controller. It has other optical storage controllers which include CD-RW, DVD-ROM, VCD. It also has mpeg2/AC-3 decoder, some mpeg2 s/w solution, jpeg codec and some other digital imaging solutions (Pixel Magic). Audio/Video division is just diversified. New opportunities are USB, SCSI, Firewire... I didn't expect OAKT to trade below $6 since it has good financial fundamental, a $5.95 book value and it is still selling 40M CD-ROM controller anually for the next 1.5 year. I guess they didn't paint a clear enough picture in its business strategy for the investors and this is its punishment. Long term the company will be okay. PS: Today I took away ATY.to from my favorite stock list because I think all the good prospects have been digested (price move up 4 folds already). I have no idea how long ATI can maintains its leadship position. I still like the company very much but not the stock for now. aC