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Technology Stocks : Western Digital (WDC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (7245)	11/7/1997 10:49:00 PM
From: Brian Lempel	Respond to of 11057

Z Analyzer, that's the other thing I forgot to mention in my last rambling post. First, it's unfair to blame WDC. First of all, their numbers might have only been inline with estates even if it weren't for external problems. But I think WDC issued $.20-.30 as an absolute low. Did anyone else listen to the Call at 1-800-351-9927? One of the questions was what nunebers they were using to come up with those estimates. It was basically said that these numbers assumed the very worst (but did not include a charge that they may take). In all fairness, though, what is WDC going to do? If Fujitsu is selling below cost, then all drive makers must step up and lower prices just to maintain market share. Looks like the oligopoly theory has failed... Brian

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (7245)	11/9/1997 1:44:00 PM
From: John Wang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11057

<<"below historic yields" even on their established mainstay 1.3 GB/platter program.>> I listened to the conference call and I did not get that impression. I think that the low yield is related to 1.7G APM head. Since this is an "over-streched" inductive head technology, APM may not have been able to produce heads with well centerd electrical and magnetic properties for other disk drive components in HDD to work with it. That may be the reason for low yield. And, for WD to consider writing off all inductive head technologies, I think that is for cost reason by listening to the conf call. They said that they would produce 1.5 million MR drives this quarter. That's a significant ram from 150K last quarter. That's a 10X! With 2.1G/platter MR drives, the cost is much lower than that of 1.3G/platter. And, for them to consider switching fast, the yield must be very good on MR. Glad to know QNTM is still doing well! John