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

To: Stitch who wrote (7720)	1/6/2000 9:00:00 PM
From: Sarmad Y. Hermiz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

>>I can think of several DD guys who would regard this as a bigger event then ...say...Y2K, or The SF earthquake, or...even the annual Sturgis Harley rally.<G> << Well, yes of course that's exactly what I mean. It is something very essential to the DD industry, but a very tiny event for the end user customer. In the past week I bought 4 PC's for home use and business. On one of them the cost of tax plus shipping was $350. I don't think that our purchasing dept could care less whether the final cost of the machine was $2400 or $2410. I am in the process of ordering a Compaq for my brother, and I am sure he will not notice the diff bet $1200 and $1210, either. Considering that the last computer I bought was a year ago and cost over $3000, anything at today's prices is a standout bargain. Regarding Fugitsu as "marginal" I mean as an independent vendor. I notice they had many GMR announcements in 1998. But I think they still use 4.3 GB platters as their building block. Is that correct. If so, then their 10GB disk uses 3 platters/5 heads. How could that possibly compete with the 1-platter announcements from (I think) WD, Maxtor and Quantum ? You're right of course on financial strength being a great advantage. But all of three of Seg, Maxtor and Quantum have sufficient finances. Seg is the strongest of course. But that is only an advantage if they were having a fight to the death. It seems at the moment they are willing to co-exist, especially if Fugitsu and Samsung direct their efforts elsewhere. You'd know this much better than I would, but the success of Fugitsu in the 2.5" may be due to the fact that the 2.5" market is much less a commodity than the 3.5". So they can have a big share of the Japan notebook market without being subject to rigorous competition. And then use their profits from their "insulated" market to dump their wares into the open market of the 3.5" drives. Hopefully though, they'll decide to concentrate on their protected position, and live and let live.