Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum

WDC 160.11

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3:59 PM EST

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To: Robert Douglas who wrote (9199)	1/8/2003 3:17:25 AM
From: Tom Simpson	Read Replies (1) of 9256

<I wonder how the suspension on that puppy works.> Me too...and I really do. Its got to be a humongous unit market between ubiquitous digital cameras and music and God knows what. Its not obvious to me that all the engineering for the physics of the 3.5 inch form factor means diddly squat in the one inch form factor. Stiffness, resonance, and a host of other material properties don't all mecesarily scale proportionately with geometry. At the moment, I haven't a clue. But in the next year or so I'll probably end up doing what I did with the 3.5 TSA...i.e. buy one and take it apart to have a looksee. In the long term it is clearly a most significant issue. I tried to dig up the comparative quarterly unit volumes on HTCH but their release for that quarter didn't have them. They used to have a truely lovely excel spreadsheet called "just the numbers" on their website you could download, but around year 2000 they got more professional types involved and that meant curtains for real data, unless you actually believe what goes to the SEC. Anyway....I dug up the spread I had thru 2000 and its actually interesting taken in the release context. HTCH unit volumes peaked at 200 mil/qtr in Mar 97....TSA launched about the same time. The average for the year of 97 was around 175 mil/qtr, the prior and following years were closer to 130 mil/qtr averages. 97 was when MR was struggling and storage demand was exploding. I bought a system that year with two huge 2 GB SCSI drives which then cost me a cool 1k. Our release looks forward with hopeful eyes towards an average of 120-125 mil/qtr for 2nd half of 2003. I can buy an 80 GB drive for what, a couple of cartons of cigarettes? Anyway you cut it, the world consumes fewer heads, fewer platters, and fewer suspensions now than they did 4-5 years ago. If and when the trend changes survivors will make serious money. I can't say I see it yet in the HTCH numbers, much as I would like to :o) Best Regards....Tom

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