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

To: Jerome Wittamer who wrote (2917)	5/4/1998 6:46:00 PM
From: limtex	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Jerome - It just seems that no-one is interested in the stock or the company. In the pubolic company world I think shareholder can have some expectation that managment will do a little only even a little to promote their stock and the company otherwise they might as well be private. There is a differnce between hype and genuine "investor relations" and PR. When was the last time an analyst mentioned the stock? When was the last time we had a new analyst commence coverage. The answer is that even the analysts aren't in the least interested in this one. Sadly it looks like were heading for the teens yet again when the rest of the market is having a huge bull run. I'm just begining to be sorry I ever heard the name SanDisk or Eli I hope something happens to change my mind. L

To: Jerome Wittamer who wrote (2917)	5/4/1998 7:50:00 PM
From: Marc Phelan	Respond to of 60323

Jerome, Interesting Intel article...... techweb.cmp.com Flash cards As of last year, Intel was the top supplier of discrete flash-memory chips, closing out 1997 with a 29.6% share of the market, according to Alan Niebel, nonvolatile-memory analyst at Semico Research Corp., Phoenix. But while it leads in the discrete- chip sector, Intel's foray into flash storage cards has met with less success. Sales of Intel flash cards dropped by 46% last year, to $22 million, lagging competing devices even as industry revenue grew by more than 30%. Of Intel's total 1997 flash-card sales, only a small percentage came from the division's marquee product: the Miniature Card, a matchbook-size device for storing data in handheld products such as digital cameras. Since its release two years ago, the Miniature Card has been buried by shipments of rival CompactFlash devices from SanDisk Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. and by Toshiba Corp.'s SmartMedia card, analysts said. Intel sold only a few hundred thousand Miniature Cards in 1997, but hopes to exceed half a million units this year, said Alan Hanson, flash-card marketing manager. By comparison, a new Semico study found SanDisk shipped more than a million CompactFlash cards last year and captured a 28% share of the flash-card market. Intel acknowledged that the Miniature Card has been slow to take off. However, the company said it has been tying the format to the Pentium by signing deals with keyboard maker Cherry Electrical Products and card-reader manufacturer SCM Microsystems Inc. Perhaps most important, Intel has tied the flash-card program to its digital imaging campaign and paired Miniature Card with its 971 PC Camera Kit. But by linking its Miniature Card and camera campaigns to the Pentium, Intel may be limiting its market to desktop and notebook PCs, while competitors pitch their digital cameras to the much larger consumer electronics market. "Intel's purpose in coming out with their kit was very self-serving," said Ron Tussy, an analyst at International Data Corp., Mountain View, Calif. "They wanted these cameras to work behind the Pentium II on a PC." To date, SanDisk has about a 60% market share in the digital-camera market, which is expected to see a 37% annual growth rate, according to Tussy. Toshiba's SmartMedia card, by contrast, occupies about 20% of the market, while Intel brings up the rear with a 10% share. With its manufacturing ramp looming, Intel is banking on the success of its StrataFlash technology to double card density by fitting two bits of data in each flash cell. But Intel's device is currently available only in a 5-V version, while competitors' cards have migrated to 3.3 V to keep pace with the industry's power demands, observers said. Hanson said 3.3-V operation is now possible by adding voltage pumps, which can add up to $2 to the cost of the card. Marc