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Can you see her in the distance, As she tumbles by?
Veteran of a race that should be over, Can you hear her sigh? — Neil Young “I’ve Loved her So Long”

One of the main arguments you’ll always hear against Sandisk and its NAND-based flash drives is that “the cloud” will kill the need for local storage on your device.  The idea being that since we’ll all have constant ultrabroadband connectivity via wireless connection to the networks that nobody will need local storage.  Indeed, I’ve seen analysts and pundits argue that local storage is already entering a reversal from secular growth to secular decline.

But do you really want less storage on your devices?  Is your wireless broadband connection and free wifi availability really that good?  Do you expect it to improve in the next three to five years all that much?  Certainly the AT&Ts and Verizons and whoever else is left in this country will continue spending and improving on their networks and the connectivity they provide.  But we are at least ten years out from having truly reliable, truly broadband, truly cheap wireless network connectivity for anybody in the major cities.  And we’re many more years out from having truly reliable, truly broadband, truly cheap wireless network connectivity for anybody in rural areas anyway.

So I am firmly in the camp that continued explosive growth in smartphones and tablets, ultra-light-laptops, along with still un-invented devices and technologies that will require local storage to run the apps and programs and content that are acquired on these modern-day “wireless broadband networks”.

Here’s an interesting little tidbit from engadget on Netflix and Android about the coming concept of being able to download, STORE LOCALLY, and then view copyrighted content on your next gen tablets:

Future Android 3.x tablets (with an unspecified hardware inclusion) will not only support native Watch Instantly streaming over mini-HDMI / HDMI, but it’ll also enable something totally new: Local storage.

The fresh build of the app — which will remain exclusive to Lenovo for “a short while” — will have a heretofore unseen option that’ll let subscribers store flicks locally for offline viewing.

I’ve been scaling into some Sandisk calls since I added it as our newest long on TradingWithCody.com.  The company reports on Thursday and there’s a lot of concern in the analyst reports about inventory build up in the channel possibly having made Sandisk miss the upcoming report.  I don’t think that’s the case, though I can tell you that I’ve been trading component supply stocks like Sandisk for fifteen years now and sometimes those temporary inventory buildups do hurt an occasional quarter even in the midst of a boom like Sandisk is experiencing.

More to the point, while I’m anxious and even excited about the upside possibility for Sandisk’s stock on any decent report given all these concerns already being out there before the report has even come out, I’m expecting that over the next five years for Sandisk to enjoy the most torrid growth in its history.

Do you see local storage in the distance, as she tumbles by?  Neil Young does and so do I.