Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Sam who wrote (1615)	11/23/1997 6:48:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9256

Yes, it doesn't seem to make sense for Samsung to go after this business when they have so many other irons in the fire, but when you think they now buy a large portion of drives for use with their Acer computer line, maybe it makes sense to produce some of these drives internally. If you subscribe to the vertical integration theory for drive makers, why not for PC makers? Maxtor has been a pretty successful story for Hyundai, or so it appears from the outside. I think if you look at a PC mag and see how many companies use Maxtor, it's not a failure. In the end, is it technical edge which drives these guys, or manufacturing skill? If IBM supplies the heads, what would stop them from having a pretty solid offer? Well, it's not a pretty picture of strong competition in a commodity market. The fact that they are having these financial troubles are a temporing factor. Regards, Mark

To: Sam who wrote (1615)	11/23/1997 7:10:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Removeable storage and the impact on head manufacturers and MR head supply. I see that Syquest upped the ante with a 4.7 gig removeable disk using 4 MR heads. This would appear to be very high end heads. Iomega just announced a 2 gig Jazz disk using 4 inductive heads supplied by Read-Rite. Seems like Iomega isn't going to like seeing Syquest steal their show with more than double capacity. Does anybody know who supplies the Syquest heads? Question? Can Iomega sell disks later using MR technology that will run in drives first designed to use inductive heads? This market offers an interesting use of heads. If they ever got the popularity of Zip drives, it would be huge. I wonder if they could put MR heads into a Zip disk? Still, if this is the future for Iomega and Syquest, will they survive the advent of affordable near field technology from TeraStor? Terastor is also proposing a removeable format which will blow away normal capacity. By the way, Read-Rite is saying Micropolis won't pay their debt. How can the company buying them, Singapore Technology, continue to do business and not pay off the debt they owe from this subsiderary? Regards, Mark