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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stitch who wrote (7428)	11/27/1999 12:24:00 PM
From: Mark Madden	Respond to of 9256

Here is a weekend report on disk drive pricing from a sample of retail distributor drives. The drives include 263 samples from 5 different distributors. Disk drive pricing remained stable last week. The weighted average desktop drive price dropped 0.2% last week. The average price of drives less than 11 gb increased 0.1%. The average price of drives between 11 and 21 gb dropped 0.4%. The average price of drives over 21 gb dropped 0.5%. The average SCSI drive (enterprise) dropped 0.6%. The weighted average desktop drive price dropped 0.9% for the last month. The average price of drives less than 11 gb dropped 0.1%. The average price of drives between 11 and 21 gb dropped 1.2%. The average price of drives over 21 gb dropped 2.1%. The average SCSI drive dropped 4.0%. The weighted average desktop drive dropped at the monthly rate of 1.3% since the beginning of this quarter. The average SCSI drive price dropped at a monthly rate of 2.7% since the beginning of the quarter. For the two years preceding this quarter the average disk drive price dropped about 5% per month. Fujitsu?s desktop drives dropped the most over the last month at 3.7%. Quantum was next at 1.9% followed by Maxtor at 1.6%. Seagate's average desktop drive increased in price 0.7%.

To: Stitch who wrote (7428)	11/27/1999 1:27:00 PM
From: Mark Madden	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Stitch, Thank you for the thoughtful comments on thinking out of the box. Certainly today's disk drive pricing has little impact on the long term future of these companies as long as they maintain the resources to continue their long term goals. Most have. IMHO the past two years of dropping prices and huge technological advances have opened doors for the future. The low cost of todays storage has increased the migration of information over wires(fiber) instead of on plastic disks loaded on trucks. Multi billions are being spent to increase communications 1000's of times over what we had a few years ago. Many say this will drop communication costs exceeding Moore's Law and in turn will increase demand at an even faster rate. There should be no shortage of information but this brings new challenges of storing and managing information. At least the hardware is available. These hard times have started drive makers thinking out of the box (pun intended). Drives are not limited to PC's. They may be a central product for the entertainment industry for both consumers and producers. Who knows what other applications will be found in the next couple years now that they drives can exist out of the box. Seagate was very lucky to sell 2/3's of their disk drive unit for 1.8 billion and have it turn to 9 billion. I bet they can't do it again <g>. Just the same they now have more resources than they need. It will just be a matter of time until they find an opportunity to convert the cash into a new direction with a rosy looking future. Perhaps drive makers will all branch out into new niches instead of butting heads in front of the computer boxes. Regards, Mark

To: Stitch who wrote (7428)	11/27/1999 5:10:00 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 9256

Stitch, Another lesson of history in today's Barron's editoral page from Thomas Donlan. He cites John Keegan's book on WWI, that maintains that the German general Schlieffen presented a plan to the Kaiser which claimed that they could take Paris, when the general himself and members of his staff that created the plan knew that logistically the plan couldn't be executed successfully, the technology just wasn't there. They presented it because they thought that that was what he wanted to hear. But the Kaiser just took their word for it instead of looking into it, and WWI and millions of deaths was launched as a result, not to mention all of the other tragic consequences of that Great War that people marched and whistled into with such naive hopes. The lesson that Donlan draws is "Far too many business plans and marketing strategies are designed to obscure the certainty of failure rather than to produce success." Now whether this lesson is an apt one for the current price war or, for that matter, for being vertically integrated in the disk drive envirvonment, I'll leave for the thread to decide. Hope everyone had a nice holiday. sam