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

To: Mark Madden who wrote (7954)	2/14/2000 6:16:00 AM
From: Tom Simpson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Mark, The data from CC looks coherent, although I question the spin they put on it. The 2.8 is actually a little ahead of what I had calculated for yearend 99 (3.2) but it makes sense for them since I don't think they ship much into the more multidisc enterprise market. But the 2.5 they forecast for the end of the year has to be nonsense. If they stick to their own plans by the end of the year you will have a choice of a 10GB, 15GB, or 20GB drive with max 2 heads, and at least someone will be peddling a single surface 10GB one head el cheapo. Not very many desktops need more than 20GB in the current environment and present applications just aren't growing storage demand at this torrid pace. I'm still getting by with my 2 2GB drives, which used to be huge :o) I won't be surprised if they come close to the unit growth numbers this quarter since they came up short last quarter, but I'll be real surprised if they sustain it next two quarters. If you listened to the CC do you remember if they said anything about this bond swap they are trying to pull off? If I was holding the bonds I don't know that I would much see a lot of value trading them in at 50 cents on the dollar for new ones. But if its that or nothing.... By the way....you have a pretty good handle on prices which means you must have a list of the current heavy moving models, in retail anyway. If you'll send me the list I'll go compile a snapshot of actual head/platter/density data on these. With it raining so much I can't do real work anyhow. Might be worth tracking directly through this year. <<I believe the components are more plentiful in the enterprise market where drives have more speed and capacity but less platter density. However, the platter density is also increasing fast in those markets.>> Exactly right....and I suspect this is why your enterprise prices have been consistently showing relatively more weakness the last few months and should continue to do so this year. And given this, I also have to believe that IBM and Seagate both have a lot more enterprise dedicated manufacturing space than they are going to need by the end of the year so there may well be more onetime charlies to come from those directions. Best......Tom