SanDisk Buying Msystems: What it Portends For the Future - The Future Looks Like Today
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SanDisk is betting big on NAND flash, and on X4 technology having widespread appeal by 2007. It is also gambling on flash memory and the devices that use them to have increased use in the next few years. Other companies also expect flash memory to grow big in the next few years. And others can only watch as SanDisk makes a huge grab at the flash memory market, not only of today, but tommorow.
Who Else is Looking Forward
Apart from SanDisk, Korean giant Samsung is investing hundreds of millions in flash memory research and development in the next year. Hynix Semiconductors, Micron Technologies and Kingston are all big in the DRAM and flash memory market. Will there be more mergers and acquisitions? Or perhaps more technological partnerships like the one between SanDisk and Toshiba? Looking back, there have been a number of these in the past, such as Toshiba's partnership with Kingston in 1997. Also worth mentioning is the way that Rambus Technology's intellectual property was used to improve the performance of big memory makers worldwide (although royalty battles have been arising between them and the OEM companies).
SanDisk And Msystems: All's Well, Which Ends...?
The future never turns out exactly as people and organizations plan it to be. SanDisk is betting on some pretty obvious indices, such as increased demand of handheld devices, and that new technologies will drive down the final prices of flash memory systems, which will allow it to penetrate the mainstream of the industry more rapidly. However the chaotic tides that life brings could turn this extremely promising and forward-looking acquisition into another statistic. But however the future turns out, even if none of SanDisk's expectation come to pass, it will strengthen its core competencies with the strong research and development arm it has found in Msystems.
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