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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ausdauer who wrote (24595)	1/21/2004 7:56:22 AM
From: Dave	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 60323

Aus: STX is Seagate, a hard drive manufacturer. The hard-drive industry in the "broad" category of storage is a tough business to make money in since the product is highly commoditized and there is little or no brand name recognition associated with the product. While some may have heard of Seagate or Maxtor, compare that to say Intel. Next, unlike many of its competitors, STX is vertically integrated where they own/control many of the elements that go into the hard drive such as the magnetic media and heads. I would say, but don't have the information, that hard drive sales are strongly correlated to PC sales. STX yesterday reported lower than expected EPS, Gross Margins and Operating Margins. Moreover, STX also lowered its expectations for the 1st Quarter of 2004. This should put some pressure on SNDK today since it, too, is a tech company in storage. However, SNDK and other flash manufacturers/sellers rely heavily on the sales of digital cameras. I wouldn't focus too heavily on the Flash Key storage devices (USB) and the reason is that these types of devices are highly commoditized. Additionally, I was at a conference this fall and a company was handing out for free these types of devices with 64MB of storage capactiy. Best regards, "Dave"