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

To: Tom Simpson who wrote (8449)	7/11/2000 12:59:32 PM
From: Toko	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

All, I've been away from this board for a while & just now catching up. Thought I'd add a few comments to the recent posts on heads & media suppliers. Heads: With the recent absorption of Headway by TDK/SAE and Yamaha's "no mas", we are only left with just a few independents- 1. TDK/SAE- they have grown to be a major success selling to almost everyone. Note that they are a diversified electronics company with profit from other divisions to help them through the tough times. 2. Read Rite- still a very diversified customer base, but tough times financially. 3. Alps- doing well recently, smaller customer base with over 50% of shipments to Quantum/MKE (they sell HGA's as well as wafers to MKE's Slider/HGA/HSA operation in Batam). Also diversified into other areas of electronics, but not as financially strong as in prior times. 4. Hitachi- smaller scale, but still trying. Hitachi Metals consolidated their OEM heads business into the bigger cousin. Only OEM customer is Samsung. I'm not counting IBM OEM heads because I don't think they have any outside customers (wonder what they are doing with the big factories they set up in China?). Major captive heads operations at IBM, Seagate, and Fujitsu, and the back-end at MKE. The surviving independents are now a pretty thin group with selling prices at all-time lows (Oh for a $10-$15 head as in the good old days of early MR). Media: Similar situation with recent departures of StorMedia, Akashic, WD, HMT, MaxMedia. Surviving independents: 1. Komag/AKCL (HMT, WD) is now Mr. Big, but has to trim the overhead; R&D for 3 different sputtering technologies. Broadest customer base. 2. Miutsubishi Chemical has aggressively tightened their belts with closure of 2 factories in Japan, now Singapore is utilizing their capacity. Quantum/MKE & Samsung. 3. Fuji Electric still has 3 factories going (2 in Japan & 1 in Malaysia), so must have some extra capacity still. Quantum/MKE & Fujitsu. 4. Showa Denko has declined significantly & may only be selling to Toshiba? 5. Trace (MaxMedia) consolidating in Taiwan?, with Maxtor as main customer. 6. Hoya: is glass media finally going to make it to prime time (in desktop IBM products), or will thicker aluminum substrates continue to hold-off for a few more years? Big internal factories at IBM, Seagate, and Fujitsu, but rumors of further consolidations ahead in media. As with heads, selling prices of media are at all-time lows (oh for the sweet memories of $10-$15 disks). Did I miss anyone of significance? Any predictions as to how this shakes out? I predict lower selling prices for HDD's over the coming years, which will continue to drive down heads & media prices. -TOKO