Rumor mill: Seagate to buy SanDisk?

Intel rumors
Others disagreed. ''We think Intel will probably not exit the flash business as this business eats up N-1 and N-2 process technology capacity,'' said Craig Berger, an analyst with FBR, in a report issued on Thursday.

''What will Intel do with all its 90-nm and 65-nm capacity if it exits all flash memory operations? The firm will still have the depreciation associated with that equipment whether it makes flash memory or not,'' Berger said. ''In fact, the whole reason Intel entered these businesses to begin with was so that flash memory could serve as a fab filler. Further, management may think, hope, or wish that solid state drives will come and save the day with respect to flash pricing. We think this is also an unlikely scenario given the enormous supply of memory capacity that Samsung continues to ramp.''

This week, Intel introduced a new version of the Robson technology. Intel Turbo Memory, dubbed Robson, uses NAND flash on the board, reducing the time it takes for a computer to power up.

''We continue to believe that this product will not succeed and that NAND in the PC or notebook will have to wait to until Microsoft imbeds into the OS the capabilities to utilize NAND,'' said Avi Cohen, head of research at Avian Securities, in a separate report.