Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum

WDC 243.80

+0.8%

3:03 PM EST

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To: Stitch who wrote (2134)	1/7/1998 3:38:00 AM
From: Gus	Read Replies (1) of 9256

Thanks, Stitch. I'm curious to find out what role WDC played in this acquisition. Because WDC is a new customer of STMD and apparently a long-time customer of Akashic, one can reasonably assume that WDC's plans played some kind of role in this sale. Anyway, despite the longtime glut in platters, there are 2 new platter makers this year: 1) Dow Chemical - specializing in media optimized for 10,000 rpm and faster disk drives. Ramp in 1998 but expected 1999 capacity - 1.0 million a month. Below is a link to survey of Dow's target market. Storage Data Rates? or Revving up for Faster Drive RPMs storage.digital.com 2) NGK Insulators - this one is interesting. They claim to have developed a process that will allow them to make glass media as cheaply as aluminum media. Glass platters supposedly provide superior shock resistance and make it easier to achieve higher densities, but these have been more expensive than aluminum platters by about 10 to 20%, limiting its use to higher-margin laptop disk drives. Ramp in 1998 but expected 1999 capacity - 1.0-2.0 million a month. Dow looks like a narrow-based and premium-priced niche operation, but NGK Insulators' entry deserves to be monitored more closely, especially by those still in those platter stocks. Gus

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