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Technology Stocks : Hutchinson Technology, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Simpson who wrote (1423)	12/10/1999 2:13:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1487

Tom, nice work. Last year at Diskcon, I was struck by the comparison of the PC market to the Storage market. PC's had about 48% of the market going to a variety of white box suppliers. Regardless of the fight between Dell, HP, Compaq and others, they still had room to grow without fighting a duel to the death. Drive on the other hand had no real product differentiation and 6 players held nearly 90% of the market. That plus way over capacity was a scenario for self destruction. Well, you have 4 players holding probably 95% of the market. I guess it's pretty important to gain an understanding of capacity vs demand. It is a pretty negative story. Do these guys thrive by killing each other? Will their customers allow anyone of them to fold? Certainly, it seems like we have nearly a worst case scenario factored into the price of Hutch. Unless Magnecomp can put together a compelling product that causes serious competiton in the high end. Last year at the show, Magnecomp claimed ability to ship tsa suspensions, and had hopes to develop a CAPS suspension based on license of Fujitsu technology. When you look at Magnecomp, do they give much info on their customer base? Do they have Fujitsu as their major customer? Have they completed production facilities in China? By the way, they even claimed ability to make micro-actuation suspensions. With drives now shipping 10 gig per platter, and growing, can we expect suspensions per drive to have leveled off, or will this continue to fall. I guess that's the real question. Add one more suspension per drive and KRP means nothing. As long as we've gone back to increasing unit growth, we can relax a little. While unit growth falls, these companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do you have any feeling for the cost of retooling that Hutch will have introducing micro-actuation? Could this be a repeat of the TSA intro? That is not a pleasant thought. Regards, Mark