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

To: T Bowl who wrote (7502)	12/12/1999 3:15:00 AM
From: Mark Madden	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Here is a weekend report on disk drive pricing from a sample of retail distributor drives. The drives include 276 samples from 5 different distributors. Disk drive pricing had a small decrease last week. The weighted average desktop drive price dropped 1.5% last week. The average price of drives less than 11 gb dropped 2.0%. The average price of drives between 11 and 21 gb dropped 0.9%. The average price of drives over 21 gb dropped 1.2%. The average SCSI drive (enterprise) dropped 0.8%. The weighted average desktop drive price dropped 1.8% for the last month. The average price of drives less than 11 gb increased 1.8%. The average price of drives between 11 and 21 gb dropped 1.4%. The average price of drives over 21 gb dropped 2.4%. The average SCSI drive dropped 4.2%. The weighted average desktop drive dropped at the monthly rate of 0.9% since the beginning of this quarter. The average SCSI drive price dropped at a monthly rate of 2.9% since the beginning of the quarter. For the two years preceding this quarter the average disk drive price dropped about 5% per month. Several new drives with higher density platters have hit the distributor market in the past two weeks. In many cases the new drives are priced similar to older drives with the same capacity but more components. Here are some examples. Maxtor drives 10.2, 20.5, 27.3 cost $123, $181, $255 replace similar capacities that cost $120, $180, $250, Seagate drives 8.4, 13.0, 17.2 cost $115, $132, $149 replace similar capacities that cost $115, $132, $149, Quantum drives 8.7, 13.0, 20.4 cost $114, $130, $204 replace similar capacities that cost $120, $127, $176, The drives with higher density platters should reduce manufacturing costs delivering similar capacities because of the fewer parts. This should increase profits without raising prices. Also, I think we are seeing some drives Z talked about without double read/write heads for each platter. Quantum has a new 4.3gb drive that may be a stripped down version of their 8.7gb single platter drive. Seagate?s U-8 13gb drive may be a stripped down version of their 17.2gb two-platter drive. With each platter delivering 8 to 10gb it is difficult to provide some sizes without eliminating some heads. Regards, Mark