Pierre,
"See how they neglect to mention what exactly will bring the HDDs out of the down cycle. That's because there ain't nuthin."
A year ago, people were saying the opposite--they couldn't see what would bring the DDs down, we were all touting the oligarchy theme (myself included--mea culpa). It always looks like nothing can make the current trend change, especially when the current trend is an extreme one.
However, one by one, the smaller companies will fall by the wayside--Micropolis already, JTS soon; others will focus more (e.g., Toshiba on the portable market); then the Battle of Titans will claim a victim or two--that is, SEG, QNTM, WDC, Maxtor, Fujitsu, IBM, Samsung cannot all be part of a Big Three (duh). Someone--maybe more than one player--is going to have to say uncle sooner or later, probably sometime this year or next. At this point, Samsung would probably be first. Perhaps IBM will pull in their horns when they see what a mess the sector has become, and become more focused on leading edge stuff, buying other drives from outside vendors. Perhaps Maxtor won't have the cash to expand. Perhaps WDC will burn their cash down in the MR transition--you can burn cash pretty quickly in this business.
Anyone else have any speculations about this? |
