http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/110908sandisk
Seems that Sadisk may be ditching its MP3 players. Recent cuts in the staff are sure to not help the line of great MP3 Players. If anyone has more details please feel free to point me in the right direction. I know that being layed off is not always fun but cut in R&D by a tech company signal bigger problems.
OK I am in an indusrty where job security is not that worry some, and I feel bad for anybody who is now or will be without work (my dad being one of them) but… Sandisk is tops when it comes to portable memory. The article you posted does not specify where the cuts are comming from. Perhaps 15% of the mailroom staff or 15% of the custodial crew it says nothing of engineering or R& D or support. Dont start a panic by posting with out complete information.
Did some research on my own… and used some other links you posted on the opp topic page (BTW a much better place to post this than on a forum about a player. This is not the place for this kind of thin IMO) most of this talk was based on numbers in Q3 last year. If the cuts happened, i will be interested to see what the Q4 numbers have to say (with the holidays some companies can make their entire year up in one quarter) with regards to further cuts. One thing I did not see is a press release from SanDisk which confirms my thoughts that what you were reading was speculation by economists based on an earnings report.
@jonsegue wrote:
Seems that Sadisk may be ditching its MP3 players. Recent cuts in the staff are sure to not help the line of great MP3 Players. If anyone has more details please feel free to point me in the right direction. I know that being layed off is not always fun but cut in R&D by a tech company signal bigger problems.
These types of things are going on in all kinds of industries all over the world. I am inclined to think that you are over-reacting to what you are reading in these links you posted, not to mention that some of them are months old so not exactly breaking news.
The sky is falling?
Bob 
I find it amazing that negative articles about a company saying how bad things are often come just after the company’s stock price has rallied greatly from its lows. Sandisk’s stock price was down to almost $5 several weeks ago. In the past few days it has rallied from the low 9s to $12+ today. While the financial report for Q4 will probably be quite ugly, many are looking towards the future, and not obsessing over the past. Sandisk has some important patents, and gets a huge amount of royalty income. Sandisk doesn’t seem to publish numbers for its mp3 player sales, or how this division is doing. Is it losing plenty of money, and if so, will it be very profitable in the future, or is it profitable? I wonder what percentage of overall revenue for Sandisk comes from mp3 players? My guess is that it is not so high. Some large consumer electronics companies are now making some great mp3 players. These larger companies still don’t make players with a card slot though. Here is a link to a chart of the company’s stock price. As you can see, the stock tends to be volatile.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SNDK&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SNDK&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
Sandisk’s loss for Q3 was much larger than expected.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ae?s=SNDK
Sandisk’s future royalty income is the key. Will Sandisk be hugely profitable in the future? This company is very difficult to analyze not only due to the boom and bust cycles of the flash memory industry, but also due to the huge amount of royalty revenue it receives.
Message Edited by JK98 on 01-06-2009 10:52 AM
Message Edited by JK98 on 01-06-2009 10:55 AM
Hmmm . . . 3 exactly identical posts on 3 different boards, all posted within minutes of registering for new membership here. All claiming something negative and that offered links to sources fail to substantiate.
<Sniff, sniff> Anyone else smell something here? I’m not sure exactly what it is. Kinda reminds me of the stench that rises up from under a bridge . . .
Can’t put my finger on it, but I think it starts with a ‘T’ and ends with an ‘L’
Strike 3.
Tape, as you can see, I used the correct instrument for diagnosis in the Off-Topic forum. Looks like my calibration is correct.
SanDisk’s bread and butter is R & D. The engineering is the root of those royalties.
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
What is the latest news?
slotMusic fails becuse of crapy audio quality (off topic thred so of topic post) come on sandisk flac is free just include it on there as well and you might as well put it on as ogg and cover all the bases.
I wouldn’t say “fails” applies to a product still in its infancy. Have a listen to SlotMusic, and you may be surprised. For the same price as a download, you get a physical µSD card, and as to the audio quality? 256 kb/s MP3 sounds pretty good.
I agree that the option of FLAC would be nice, giving the user a high resolution copy of the music. The tradeoff is compatibility, as the idea is being able to load the file into your mobile device, and that means other machines other than just the Sansa. Thus, we have MP3 on the SM card.
The little Slot Music player is tough as nails too.
As far as engineers go, have a look at some of the kludgy devices out there, then have a closer look at the products the team at SanDisk are producing. I think I’d hold on to those guys.
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
i understand having mp3 on the card but with it being 1gb there is enough room to have the music ecoded in FLAC as well so both formats are on the card. and yes it is the same price as a digital download but at the same time so is a cd. so what i want is both mp3 and flac on the card and if theres enough room ogg as well
@jonsegue wrote:
Seems that Sadisk may be ditching its MP3 players. Recent cuts in the staff are sure to not help the line of great MP3 Players. If anyone has more details please feel free to point me in the right direction. I know that being layed off is not always fun but cut in R&D by a tech company signal bigger problems.
I wonder if the clearances at Conns and Costco mentioned in another thread were brought on by sagging sales:
http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=sansafuse&view=by\_date\_ascending&message.id=22035#M22035
http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=sansafuse&view=by\_date\_ascending&message.id=22106#M22106
A few comments attributable to SanDisk Founder Eli Harari from last October:
…Indeed, SanDisk Chairman and CEO Eli Harari revealed on the company’s Q3 call with analysts that capital expenditures have been cut and that layoffs are on the way.
“We now expect our 2008 capital investment outlays to be approximately $500 million below the $2.4 billion in our original 2008 plan,” he said, adding that 2009 capex investments are now projected to be approximately $1.3 billion, down from the company’s previously planned $3 billion.
In addition to the capex cuts, Harari noted SanDisk is restructuring its supply commitments and is taking actions to lower its operating expenses.
“These actions will be implemented in the current quarter and will include cancelling or exiting a number of product and marketing activities, and will result in employee reductions in R&D, sales and marketing, G&A [general and administrative] and operations,” Harari continued.
The company gave no further detail on the job cuts during its quarterly call.
“We will continue to invest in the areas that are most strategic for our future, including advanced NAND and 3D read/write development, mobile storage, solid-state disk, and slotMusic,” Harari said.
I hope the Fuze and its variants will weather the downturn. For me it was an impulsive buy, I had yet to own a digital audio-video player, didn’t know much about them and was attracted by the sale as I walked down an aisle. And I wasn’t sure I would hang on to it, but on first listen to the fantastic sound that changed: the addition of the FLAC format (which I had yet to use before the purchase either), the discovery of the fine voice recorder and the FM tuner, the convenience of the external micro-SD drive and the support through a periodically updated firmware and online forum solidified my affinity for the player and my decision not to make a gift of my first purchase.
And I suspect there are many others like me, people who do not know what they are missing until they have tried one.
Well, they might as well lay off the engineers. No point in designing new products when they can’t sell existing ones to people who want to buy them!
Maybe that’s why there’s no new firmware…yet <fingers crossed>
@fla_hotrod wrote:
Maybe that’s why there’s no new firmware…yet <fingers crossed>
This thread was dead for a long time. It was revived by someone who wants you to think like that. There is no firmware yet because its not ready for the public, my guess is that there was a major glitch discovered in the QA process.
@conversionbox wrote:
This thread was dead for a long time. It was revived by someone who wants you to think like that. There is no firmware yet because its not ready for the public, my guess is that there was a major glitch discovered in the QA process.
And it was the very same one who started it in the 1st place. 
I wouldn’t assume that a glitch is there in the first place. Plenty of man-hours ride on each firmware release, and it simply has to be right before it hits the servers.
This thread was dormant for a while, I wish I could spray it with Raid. Unkind, it is.
Bob 
@neutron_bob wrote:
I wouldn’t assume that a glitch is there in the first place. Plenty of man-hours ride on each firmware release, and it simply has to be right before it hits the servers.
This thread was dormant for a while, I wish I could spray it with Raid. Unkind, it is.
Bob
These last few days, I think you would need more than one can of Raid…too much of and not enough
Marvin , you have the right idea! Time to crank it up a bit. I have the e200 feeding the speakers.
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
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