Samsung Electronics withdrew its US$5.8 billion offer to acquire SanDisk, saying it no longer believed SanDisk was worth the money it was offering and that SanDisk's refusal to entertain friendly discussions stymied hopes for a deal. In a letter to SanDisk's top executives, Samsung Chief Executive Officer Lee Yoon-woo said SanDisk's third-quarter loss and the subsequent restructuring of its chipmaking deal with Toshiba Corp. "point to a considerable increase in your risk profile and a material deterioration in value."

SanDisk said it is still "open" to a Samsung buyout offer and hinted at more restructuring to come, as the largest supplier of retail flash memory cards reported a third-quarter 2008 net loss of US$155 million on Monday. The loss was significantly worse than the net income of US$85 million reported in the third quarter of 2007. SanDisk and other flash memory chip suppliers have been hit by a steep price decline in flash.

SanDisk may have just concluded a multibillion-dollar patent licensing lawsuit with Samsung which could determine the future of both SanDisk and the flash industry at large. As SanDisk considers a US$5.8 billion takeover offer by the flash giant, private arbitration has given Sandisk rights to a technology that may well hold the future of flash memory.

The SlotMusic cards, about the size of a fingernail, will feature music by artists from EMI Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, the companies said in a statement Monday. Listeners can insert them into portable devices or copy the music onto a personal computer. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

"Yes, Samsung is still in (merger) talks with SanDisk," Kwon Oh-hyun, head of the company's semiconductor division told The Korea Times on the sidelines of a business forum held at the National Assembly. "Samsung's legal team has reviewed measures to calm down a possible anti-trust issue in the United States if the deal succeeds," Kwon said. U.S. financial regulators would most likely reject the proposed deal because it would create a near monopoly in the flash memory market, analysts say.

...Eventually the industry will need an entirely new technology, and SanDisk believes it has the solution in 3D memory, the technology it gained through the January 2006 acquisition of Matrix Semiconductor. The concept behind 3D memory is that you can simply stack arrays of cells vertically to increase storage density rather than increasing the size (and cost) of the chip. It’s like building a skyscraper rather than expanding the footprint of a building. SanDisk says it has more than 200 patents around 3D memory...

Despite the hype surrounding the promising technology, SanDisk is placing blame on Windows Vista for not providing enough of a speed boost when using SSDs... ...(but) It is quite true that SanDisk's SSD are woefully subpar in performance when running Windows Vista. Numerous benchmarks from around the web have shown SanDisk SSDs getting outpaced by the competition.

On Monday, SanDisk quietly acquired MusicGremlin, a maker of Wi-Fi enabled MP3 players.