Summary
1. SanDisk is maintaining it's technology leadership position in MLC NAND flash technology. 2. Ultimately this will lead to an additional stream of royalty revenue from it's competitors who will need 4 bit per cell technology to compete. 3. If Samsung still wants to purchase SanDisk, this technolgy break through could force Samsung to offer a higher price for any buy out offer.
Analysis
1. SanDisk did purchase M-Systems approximately 3 years ago. In reality the main impetus for the purchase was to get access to the X-4 technology that they had under development.
2. I strongly believe that SanDisk's partner Toshiba will not allow SanDisk to be bought by Samsung without a counter offer from Toshiba.


