<<but I feel the real problem is that you lost faith in a company>>
As Stitch has pointed out, in the circumstances this statement is just plain silly.
What the root trouble actually is will be found in the physics of MR based head making. The turkey(s) we are all looking for are those dumb engineers who figured out solutions to the problems of making and using MR/GMR heads, because it is that which enabled our current arial density growth rate. Neither management, investors, wall street, or anyone else truly anticipated and forecast this course of events....such differentiations as can be made revolve around how quickly and in what way they have reacted to it as the scale of it unfolded.
So there you have it....the true culprits are those dumb engineers who thought they were being smart and doing good things for the world by raising the slope of the density growth curve to 100% or so. If we want emotional satisfaction for the negative consequences to us we can perhaps find solace in the knowledge that they were probably paid off, for doing such superb work, using stock options :o)
If we need a specific company to blame, IBM stands out for having developed MR technology in the first place. Actually its probably all a long term plot hatched up by those brilliant IBM Fellows to destroy their competition in this industry and the full scope of it is not yet apparent.
Its pointless to beat the industry over the head for making a peddling units at these prices. When you have too much unit capacity, you have to pump more units through or write it off and mothball it or both. There is money that has to be lost because it was spent on floor space and machinery no longer needed; the only real choice is how this money is lost. Everyone has been in this swamp and the only real way out is to quit the business.
Eventually, this will probably end; unless one anticipates a 100% density growth rate indefinitely. More likely it will drop and we will find everyone caught flatfooted and short capacity. Then we will have something new to berate management about even as we get rich from the shortage.
Some executives and companies have managed relatively better than others....this is true. But no one, not a single one, has sidestepped around the swamp.....and holding Veritas in their stock portfolio doesn't count as a proper sidestep for Seagate either, though it did keep their stockholders out of the swamp, for which Luzco is now claiming his unjust reward.
With pessimism so deep here in these threads it is perhaps time to begin carefully watching the total platters shipped curve for positive signs. Good things will follow those signs.
Best Regards.....Tom |
