I dunno, this looks crazy to me:
Seagate, on the other hand, is a major name in hard drives, which are important in clients and servers alike. From a private equity view, that’s a chance to buy the company, “improve” its financial performance (though that doesn’t necessarily mean leave the company better off), and then sell it to either another hard drive manufacturer or to a PC company that wants more control over its parts supplies.
First of all, there aren't many HD companies out there, and there are even fewer ones that would want buy Seagate. Ditto for PC companies. HD margins aren't so great that a PC company would get much if they had their very own drive company. Plus there is the wild card in the house: SSDs. How quickly will they catch on, how much will they eat into traditional HDs. They won't take everything, there will for the foreseeable future be a cost difference that will be significant enough to allow HDs to continue. But they will definitely seriously erode the HD TAM over the next 2-5 years. Whether Seagate can make its hybrid drive a success or not is the key to how well it will do in the coming years. |
