Can PCM mem. create a competitive advantage?

Now when a company views Phase Change memory from both selling and purchasing stand point, the company must ask, how does this product provide us with an edge on our competition?

Well lets take into account a basic model, called Porters five forces model. (shown to the left)

This model is quite simple to understand, in a nutshell, it contains 5 components of which each has an effect on a business. For example, lets say my company sells different types of juice and a New Vendor, who sells almost the same variety of juices, just opened a store right across the street from us. Now this Vendor has a force on me, I must either compete on my prices, by lowering them, or create better products than they do.

Now with this basic knowledge, how do we apply this concept to a company that wishes to either sell or buy PCM memory?

Well before we can jump into explaining why a company should buy or sell PCM memory, we need to know another model from Porter, called Porter's Four Competitive Strategies. It is quite self explanatory, if  company wants to out-do a rival company, it can reduce the prices of all of it goods and services, or a certain type of goods and services.

Now we can explain how a company can get a edge for selling or buying PCM memory.

Lets take on the perspective of a company selling PCM memory, IBM for example. They can make a competitive advantage through how their product is faster and more durable than that of their competitor's product, thereby IBM is differentiating their product. Also, with this new and "better" product, it maintains the rate of improvement in customer value; hence people are more willing to purchase PCM memory from IBM, than that of the competition.

Now from a customer perspective, if I were to but a PCM memory card from IBM, how does this provide a edge on my competition. If I have equipment which can process data 100 times faster than a flash, why would I want to purchase a flash drive. Also, if I am a data storage company, where I outsource my services of storing other peoples data, I must use many storage devices to contain all the data of my clients. With many storage devices comes repairing and replacement. Hence if PCM memory is more durable than the most current alternative, I would definitely purchase PCM memory.

Though my examples maybe exaggerated, we just want to invoke you to understand why PCM memory can or could be the future of the Data Storage industry.