Yah, there were rumors that Fujitsu would exit the desktop but that holds no water. They need the unit volumes produced by their desktop share to absorb their fixed costs.
Yes, Larry Sanders, a real good manager, left late last year and the US product design and marketing team has had difficulty adjusting to the new Japanese honcho, Kawaguchi.
Just recently (in August) they lost Paul Hanson, V.P. of Storage Products,who was replaced by Joel Hagberg, formally Senior Director of Storage Products and another good manager. So they have depth.
They can't screw up the US marketing team, but they could eliminate the San Jose and Colorado design teams (Don't think they will though). I'm told their Japanese disk drive design team counterparts are top notch.
Having desktop, enterprise and mobile drives makes them a formidable opponent at OEMs where can bundle all drive segments. They're the only ones that can do this, unless you consider IBM an OEM player in the desktop (and I don't).
Look for Fujitsu to announce their 20 GB per platter very soon. They are uncharacteristically (geez, is that word?)late.
Regards,
LT |
