Many of these traditional Disk Drive companies are making investments in new areas of higher growth and potentially higher margins. This is happening at a time when upgrades and higher expectations are likely to be exceeded by actual earnings. Result? In my opinion we will see much greater increases in the stock prices in the sector.
biz.yahoo.com
Storage Appliance Markets Continue to Expand
SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 2000--The non-conventional disk and tape storage markets are continuing to expand, and may account for 20-25 percent of the disk drive shipments in the 2003-2004 time frame (approximately 50 million disk drives).
Although the forecast numbers and applications are still somewhat fluid, the use of disk and tape storage in non-conventional markets is increasing. The storage appliance markets are defined as:
-- Consumer set-top and set-back boxes
-- Digital camera storage
-- Storage in laser printers, fax machines
-- Global positioning systems, automobile applications
-- Appliance applications, sewing machines
-- Gaming machines
-- Wearable computers
-- Other emerging markets
The fastest-growing segments of these new markets are the set-top boxes and digital cameras. The set-top box market has consumed approximately 4 million drives to date.
The digital camera market has been using flash memory and is projected to grow from under 5 million camera units in 1999 to approximately 30 million cameras in 2002. The number of storage devices per camera will be 4-5 per year per camera.
IBM, and soon Halo, will be shipping disk drives into this market at lower cost than flash and less rugged; a percentage of this market is expected to use disk drives.
Dennis Waid, president of Peripheral Research Corp., stated, ``We will experience many new markets for these cost-effective storage products develop over the next 3 years, many of which we cannot define today.'
The 2000 Non-conventional Storage Applications Report (March 2000), published by Peripheral Research, identifies trends and forecasts for the above markets.
A forecast summary follows:
INDUSTRY SEGMENT STORAGE REQUIREMENTS
(All Storage Types, Units 000)
1999 2003
Laser Printers 980.1 3,159.2
GPS Systems 100.0 1,300.0
Set-Top Boxes 3,500.0 26,400.0
Digital Cameras 11,200.0 68,000.0
Others(a) 802.3 8,094.6
Totals 16,582.4 106,953.8
(a) Others includes appliance, MP-3, gaming industries and new
applications.
Data Storage industry revenue could approach $9 billion in 2004, up from approximately $1 billion in 1999.
All of the conventional storage companies today (Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum, Western Digital, SanDisk, Halo and others) have marketing groups dedicated to these new markets. All of the camera companies and the set-top box manufacturers, such as Scientific Atlanta, TiVo, Replay, General Instruments, Panasonic and Web-TV, are using disk storage in their products.
For additional information or a copy of the executive summary, contact Dennis Waid, Peripheral Research Corp., 351 Hitchcock Way, No. B-200, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93105; telephone 805/563-9720.
Contact:
Peripheral Research Corp., Santa Barbara
Dennis Waid, 805/563-9720
805/563-6020 fax
E-mail: waidprc@aol.com |
