SYNA

[just_an_ant]

Robear and I have played with this one. We like it better as a $20 stock.

I don't presently own any (it was all put back into Pixar).

Under Billion dollar company; profitable, nice cash position, good market - dominate in touchpads, etc. (computers, MP3) - large market opening in cellphones.

Did have contract with Apple on iPod, but have since lost that given Apple's direction. Stock was beaten up a little, but has recovered to near 30s.

Anyways a stock to consider for your "technology" portfolio or allocation.

[greykitedad]

Apple switched from Synaptics to Cypress scrolling hardware to reduce costs. They returned to Synaptics for some additional capacity recently (I wondered if that move suggested that Analyst projections for iPod sales were low, and they were). It may be that they'll stay with Synaptics to ensure a steady supply of chips, or drop them once Cypress is able to handle demand.

The rest of the MP3 market may be growing fast enough to keep Synaptics going strong, but if Cypress (and others) come online, the competition may be fierce.

MP3 players and cell phones are consuming a lot of technology from various vendors. It's not a bad idea to "follow the money" to find good investments.

Flash memory suppliers have done well in the last year. Sandisk (SNDK) should have been in all our portfolios The peril, as always is that everybody is now rushing to get into this "hot" market.

Update: PortalPlayer guided up for the next Q. A good portion of their output goes into iPods.