To: MKL who wrote (5328 ) 7/30/1998 3:35:00 PM From: Sam Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Yes, but the excess capacity among drive vendors stemmed more from the second tier players like Fujitsu and Maxtor--not to mention a more aggressive IBM--trying to gain greater market share, and boosting their capacity and their pricing aggressiveness than from the erstwhile top 3 drive vendors not forecasting demand accurately. SEG, QNTM and WDC allowed the smaller players room to expand by not being fast enough to design new products that kept incorporating higher aerial densities, and maintaining the cost advantage that should have been theirs by virtue of their much higher volumes, if they were executing properly, and by not cannibalizing their own products quickly enough. The problems in the media companies was more from companies like SEG, WDC and IBM increasing their internal capacity, as well as HMTT increasing their capacity (and of course, KMAG and STMD not upgrading their equipment). The head problems [pun intended] of RDRT and APM came from not transitioning into MR heads soon enough, and the Japanese essentially letting them have the end of the run for TFI heads, sort of suckering them in rather like the Sioux did to Custer.
