<p>Almost too tangled to comprehend:</p> <p>INTC announced plans to spend $5.5 bln to build a chip plant in China, presumably to produce the new NAND flash replacement chips it co-developed with Micron. Micron gets cut to 'underweight' by an analyst, saying this will add to the NAND supply glut. (Hmm...thought it was clear that the new memory isn't a competitor to existing NAND memory, but supercedes it, and so is the successor to the slower, older technology. Perhaps I've got this wrong but - I had thought that SanDisk's 3D vertical memory was an implementation of new technology. But one article I read dated its introduction to 2006 (doesn't seem likely, since I *think* it's just being produced in large quantities now - and is apparently not a SanDisk only product, but licensed to many companies.)</p> <p>Meanwhile, SanDisk had fallen from a high of ~$106 to as low as ~$50 - I was tempted, but the analysts were saying that demand was going to be slack and increase competition and lower prices. I wasn't surprised to see it rise to the low 60's.....but I checked today, and it's trading up a couple of $ to around $78. Western Digital announced plans to buy SanDisk for an ungodly sum of money - works out to about $86/share. So why is SanDisk trading at $78? Seems there are complicating factors besides getting approval - something about it trading at a high of ~$106 for the year. I don't quite get that. For WD, it makes some surface sense in terms of their needing to re-invent themselves a bit, mostly by producing hybrid disk/flash drives, as physical drive platters are on their way out. But where does INTC's NAND replacement come in on this deal? If Micron is curbed on 'oversupply' of NAND, it may make the WD-SNDK deal a bit strange, if WD is buying technology (3D NAND flash has been around since.....last month? 2006?) that is crushing Micron.</p> <p>Likely just my misunderstanding something in the twists and turns. WD obviously wouldn't lay out big bucks for older tech....but why the rather big spread between SNDK's current price and the announced buyout price? Is it worth it to speculate here? Probably not, given what a muddle it is, and what it might take to reserach it and understand all the players and parts correctly. </p>