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

To: steve goldman who wrote (9227)	4/29/1998 9:27:00 PM
From: shane forbes	Respond to of 11057

Preface this by saying I'm in wait mode for the next few quarters having bought in at 19 one and a half months ago. ---- But just my guess on his losing market share argument: If WDC and its US brethren are shipping flat to reduced #s of drives and the Asian companies are continuing to show increases in the # of drives shipped (guess), then ergo WDC losing market share as measured by drives shipped. (Implicit Assumption: Total # of drives shipped increased for all companies combined - I think this is correct. Even if this "increase-in-drives-assumption" is wrong and the TOTAL # of drives shipped actually did decrease, the above argument is still valid as long as the drop in total # of drives shipped on a % basis is less than the % drop in WDC drives shipped. Thus if total drives shipped dropped 5% and WDC drives shipped dropped 9% then as Mr. Ergo would say WDC lost market share. blah blah blah...) --- Then again who really cares about the number of drives shipped. Hypothetically, if JTS ships 100,000 drives at 1 Gig from say 50,000 last year and WDC is shipping in the 1 gig area 500,000 from 1,000,000 last year do I really care that WDC lost market share here??? NOPE. In the midst of a product transition, it is quality and density not quantity necessarily. I could care less about the junky old stuff. Out with the old; In with the new! ---- WDC said and rightly so that: (1) they are abandoning the 2.5 g area (and by extension I would guess this means the low-end tripe) (2) they are not going to be the price leader. Then even if they lose market share in say #s of drives shipped it matters not to me! AS LONG as the upcoming trend is to be back in the race in the high end area. ---- Of course one could also measure m.share by Gigs or something similar and then WDC may have lost share but not as much. I think the OEM decreases were, as they mentioned, linked to the last TF based drives not being qualified + the new MR based drives requiring more qual. time - therefore one may argue (inventory crap notwithstanding) that this dip is shipments is temporary. ---- Shane.