LT,
<<but what I'm referring to is the PC/HDD supplier/vendor or "foodchain" alliances when I refer to "tight alliances" - beyond just second sourcing. In fact I'm referring to a departure from second sourcing.>>
Sounds like "virtually vertical integration".
I'm a simplistic kinda guy so, for your consideration, there simply is not adequate demand for desktop storage capacity. Corporate buyers don't need it, home buyers don't need it, nobody needs it so technological achievement is going unrewarded.
What could change the demand equation?
Broadband connectivity (see :http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/990325/bi7.html -- "In a briefing, chief executive officer Tom Jermoluk of At Home Corp., the leading cable modem company, said service upgrades would be rolled out to up to 15 million new homes per year for the next three to four years.")
Home networks controlling new products including digital VCRs, portable appliances, pervasive computing appliances.
Continuing the simplistic theme, I know that I have no plans to add equipment until I get a very high speed connection at a reasonable price. When I get that, I'll go on a spending spree that will cause my sainted wife to have heart palpitations.
We are in demand doldrums here but it will change. Sony's Playstation II, broadband (whether DSL or cable), multimedia compression (RealNetworks, Quicktime, ala Broadcast.com) are all not quite ready but they are coming.
If we actually manage to shake out some weak sisters like WDC, APM, RDRT (that one pains me), Maxtor, so much the better.
Yogi
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