About Castlewood's ORB
The following are excerpts from "The Edge" an investment weekly available in Kuala Lumpur. The article from which these excerpts are obtained is about a local listed contract manufacturer of electronic components (Trans Capital Holdings) that is manufacturing OBR drives; the company also owns 5% of Castlewood with options to purchase more.
Words in [ ] and bold emphasis are mine.
<<"We have had phenomenal interest from major traditional original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and our drives are basically sold out. There is interest from Japan, the US and Europe, and there is ten times more demand than what Transcap intends to manufacture," he [Syed Iftikar] says.
The Penang-based company intends to produce 375,000 ORB drives by 2000. It is starting out with a production of 55,000 drives this year and aims to make 150,000 of these by 1999.
The majority of the ORB drives will be produced by a Japanese manufacturer.
The ORB drive currently retails at US$199 each, while the removable 2.2 gigabyte cartridge sells for US$29 a piece. [Is it really out there? Has anyone got one?]
Castlewood's rivals Iomega and Syquest are charging between US$500 and US$700 for their removable drives and between US$70 and US$150 for their cartridges. [No longer valid with recent price cuts from IOM, but I'm just quoting here.]
Syed Iftikar is already looking far ahead, with Castlewood preparing the next generation ORB drive. "By next year, we will have a removable disk drive selling for US$99 each with between 4 gigabytes and 6 gigabytes of memory," he says. Cartridges will retail for under US$10.
Transcap holds a strategic 5 per cent stake in Castlewood, and has an option to buy another 5 per cent. Castlewood's other shareholders include Japanese conglomerates Aiwa and Sanyo.<<
It looks like another round of serious price cutting for IOM later this year. The recent cuts in Jaz prices don't even come close to Iftikar's targets. If indeed the 4-6GB disks start selling for UNDER $10 next year, IOM had better have something really spectacular up its sleeve to counter the move. With that kind of pricing, OEMs will be most interested.
Iftikar is also eyeing the video market:
"It is even possible to replace video tapes with the digital ORB drive--what you get is video in digital format with near-perfect playback. So, our one product will go into the personal computer, the television, and the set-top box on the TV," he says.
Comments anyone?
Winston |
