Marketwatch
Integral Technologies Inc. (Indianapolis, IN) has completed a $5 million equity investment from CID Equity Partners to support the company?s growth and liquidity needs in designing and manufacturing digital video imaging hardware and software for OEMs. . . . A market study by InfoTrends Research Group (Boston, MA) states that North American unit shipments of scanners exceeded 4 million in 1997 and that this market is poised to surge another 50% in 1998. The study also claims that approximately one in 14 computer users are expected to have a scanner by year?s end, and the personal computer-to-scanner connect rate is projected to exceed 20% by 2002. . . . According to the 1998 Solid-State Disk and Flash Memory Market and Technology Report from Peripheral Research Corp. (Santa Barbara, CA), total unit demand is estimated at approximately 6.7 million drives in 1998, up from 3.2 million drives in 1997. Revenues in 1998 are expected to reach $458 million, up from $284 million in 1997. Solid-state disk pricing has dropped from an average cost of $30/megabyte in 1997 to $15/megabyte in 1998. Flash memory pricing has decreased from an average cost of $24/Mbyte in 1997 to $16/Mbyte in 1998. The report predicts that all solid-state memory pricing should decline below $5/megabyte by 2002. . . .Sandisk Corp. (Sunnyvale, CA) shipped 1 million CompactFlash solid-state memory cards in 1997, a lofty 663% increase over the 131,000 cards shipped in 1996. Sales are attributed to the growing popularity of digital cameras, hand-held computers, and medical monitors, among others. The removable, matchbook-size memory cards, which come in 2-, 4-, 6-, 8-,10-, 15-, 20-, and 24-Mbyte sizes, are used to capture and store images, as well as store data and audio. They are sold under various company brands, such as Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, Konica, NEC, and Panasonic, as well as SanDisk. . . . US factory sales of electronics equipment, components, and related products exceed $460 billion for
