Re: Alleged Dumping
You said:
>How long can Fujitsu, Hitachi, and perhaps Maxtor (Korea)
> sell at or below cost as some are suggesting?
Can you give me citations for dumping allegations against Hitachi and Maxtor?
You said:
>What of WDC? Will they be able to buy the license to Big Blue's
> Giant MR technology? Dunno - but if so, they leapfrog the >competition.
Bill, WDC is a modern company in the sense that they are almost totally un-integrated. They buy all their HSAs, most of their platters, and other drive components from various suppliers.
__The value that WDC adds to the HDD is assembly and marketing. An unintegrated company like this has no interest in leapfrogging competition via technology -- they don't even have the ABILITY to do so.
__In order for that to happen, their suppliers across the entire component list would have to develop GMR products -AND- sell them exclusively to WDC. Ain't gonna happen -- the supplier's own livelihoods depends on selling into a broad customer base. The only company that would be able to establish a lock on GMR in an attempt to technologically outpace the competition is IBM themselves, and IBM has shown that they have no interest in that (very wise, IMHO). In retrospect, the whole leapfrog idea was a Foolish speculation for Randy Befumo to make (pun intended <g>).
__Furthermore, in the last technology transition WDC intentionally lagged the industry somewhat for a set of very good reasons that paid off for them. Ms. Braun suggested they MAY have stayed with TFI one generation too many but even now that isn't clear.
Ciao,
Pierre
P.S. Add Paul Z. Pilzer, Burton G. Malkiel, and Geoffrey A. Moore to your list of required reading (the one that has Graham, Dremen, et al.) <g> These are writers that have profoundly educated me on various topics of modern business and economics. |
