For Good News, Try Sandisk at Vegas

There is really only one place in the world where one can expect only good news this week, and that is the Consumer Electronics Show [CES], the world's largest electronics convention opening Wednesday evening in Las Vegas.

After the war (in Israel) ends, and sometime this year when the recession ends, we will go back to buying and playing with the coolest toys and gadgets, and those will be introduced this week in Las Vegas.

Overall, it is possible to guess that everything that will be displayed there will be connected to the world of the Internet, with the goal being to provide us with the heaviest possible video content, at the fastest speed, at the highest quality (high definition), on any device that one would want to watch, in or out of the home, via wireless communications or via all manner of cables, including telephone wires [IPTV].

In terms of devices, the home TV is expected to grab headlines at the show. After many years of unfulfilled promises, advanced television systems will be shown, through which it will be possible to receive fast internet content without the need for a converter in between.

Among Israeli companies which will be at the CES, Dov Moran's Modu will introduce, for the first time in the U.S., its revolutionary telephone handset, about a year after its successful and dramatic launch at the Barcelona cellular show.

Alvarion Ltd.'s (Nasdaq: ALVR) corporate vice president innovation and marketing, Dr. Mohammad Shakouri, will participate in a panel on Thursday called "Wireless Alphabet Soup: Sorting Out The Acronyms", dealing with the new mobile devices that consumers will have in the new age of wireless communications. Shakouri will be joined by panelists from Broadcom (BRCM), Cisco (CSCO), and Intel (INTC).

Third generation of the USB drive

SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq:SNDK) rose over 15% on Friday, and speculation about that rise ranged from a renewed offer by Samsung, through an acquisition of Toshiba (TOSBF.PK) or a renewed royalties deal with Samsung, up to an announcement or dramatic launch in Las Vegas this week. I would bet on the last rumor, and among other reasons, I rely on my friend, independent analyst Mark Savolainen, who wrote about these rumors about a month ago on his blog.

Microsoft (MSFT) and msystems collaborated over many years, and close to the final merger with SanDisk, it was officially released that the two firms were developing the next generation USB drive. The first generation was the mythological Disk-on-key, which was invented at the beginning of the decade by a Dov Moran-led team, and the second generation, known as U3, followed as a result of collaboration between msystems and SanDisk.

Educated investors are betting that this week, the third generation USB drive, to be called StarKey, will be launched. StarKey is the result of collaboration between Microsoft and SanDisk. It is an advanced drive, whose exact features remain unknown. According to rumors, it will expand beyond USB, and will be based on a flash memory card geared for telephone and camera use, and Savolainen bets maybe even a solid state drive. What is not known primarily is the type of software and applications that Microsoft has decided to load on the new drive.

Regarding the solid-state drives that will soon replace quite a few regular HDD drives, by all accounts it's a giant market, Savolainen expects an announcement this week on a technological breakthrough, in which SanDisk succeeds, after a long time, to get its advanced flash memory chip (X3, X4) technologies in SSD drives, which should dramatically lower their cost. If that is correct, it places SanDisk and its partner, Toshiba, at a great advantage over Samsung and other SSD players.

Disclosure: None

Published originally by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006. Republished on Seeking Alpha with full permission.