Pierre, thanks for the info, that's basically what I wanted to know, quality of their disk drives, financial backing, etc. In the short term, they appear to be a threat to WDC in the retail channel for replacement/addition of disk drives, perhaps also with the box makers but that part is difficult to determine. Do you know what markets Maxtor is active?
My other question (perhaps unanswerable), is what is Maxtor and Fujitsu up to? At this point in the dd industry, they'd have to sell disk drives at a loss for several quarters before they could drive anyone else out of business. Before that happens, the FTC would nail them for dumping.
P.S. & Off Topic: S3 is not in good shape, IMHO. My condolences if you invested in them. However, they're down to book value and that's not counting in the Taiwan foundry, so they may be beaten down too far. I blame their top management, who deserve to be burned at the stake during the next shareholder meeting. I'm not up-to-date on their current product mix, but S3 generally has a good reputation so it'll be interesting to see how their problems affect R&D, new product announcements, etc. |
