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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum
WDC 152.80-0.1%11:18 AM EST
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To: Mark Madden who wrote (7206)10/11/1999 2:53:00 PM
From: Z Analyzer  Read Replies (2) of 9256
 
<<I consider price drops of 5% per
month as normal over the last few years and 3.5% as healthy.
>>
5% monthly works out to about 82% annually which is a little better than the 100% areal density increases we've been seeing for the last two years.
What would be very interesting to know, which you probably have the data for, is what has happened to prices over the last year for, let's say a two platter high volume drive using the currrent high volume density (now probably the 8.X GB/platter versus a year ago probably about 4.2GB/platter).

My impression is that this platform must be down significantly in price which gives a truer indication of drive manufacturers efficiencies (especially if adjusted for changes in manufacturer's gross margins) without the constant march to higher capacity platters clouding the picture. I suspect QNTM and MXTR would give the cleanest analysis since they have very high volume platforms and haven't had seismic shifts in their business models as have WDC and SEG.

We know areal densities will continue to increase. A more interesting question is whether costs and prices for a given platform type will continue relentlessly lower. Once you get the costs out of drive electronic complexity, can you cost reduce components whose improvement must be continuous to generate density increases, especially if the law of diminishing returns apply as limits are approached? -Z
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