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Technology Stocks : Applied Magnetics Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sawtooth who wrote (10405)	11/18/1997 9:26:00 AM
From: Greg Jung	Respond to of 12298

Tim, I've been thinking that GMR is not a near-term relevant factor. The assembly to be used is a nominal one, the drives will have no more capacity than 1.7gig/platter: they are simply selling some to get a real production capacity in order. The write heads used in the current design are TFI-1.7g, GMR is used for the read heads. So I feel the density really hasn't increased, only that the technology is getting exercised. If you get a GMR deskstar make sure you keep the warranty! Greg

To: Sawtooth who wrote (10405)	11/18/1997 10:46:00 AM
From: Think4Yourself	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12298

re: If you were running a company like APM would you try and play catch up to drag yourself into what is considered to be a transient technology currently being surpased and likely to guarantee that your product is virtually technologicaly obsolete when you finally get into full production? See Greg's reply (10407) if you have not already done so. Tim, APM probably cannot leapfrog MR, even though they may want to. 1. APM probably does not have access to the technology yet. Attempting to get it now may make them a legal punching bag for IBM. 2. APM is not vertically integrated as IBM is, and thus could not take easy advantage of the technology even if they had it. I do not have all of the details on the GMR technology, but it may not be a drop in replacement for MR heads. APM is probably still a good investment short term, but you may be waiting 6 months or more before the industry's prices rise. The numbers themselves will all change with the (once again) immature price wars, but the direction of APM's indicators looks good. Short Interest is declining (RDRT's is going up), Insiders are not selling (RDRT's are), and profit margins are near 20% (I believe RDRT's is around 7%). As for me, I'll wait. Ken