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

To: Yogi - Paul who wrote (5927)	3/26/1999 4:38:00 PM
From: La Traguhs	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9256

Yogi, Yeh! <<Sounds like "virtually vertical integration".>> That term has been used recently and certainly does apply. You touched on that often debated question - do we need all this capacity? Let me jaw a spell on that. Depends on the segment being address. The low end doesn't but the high end does. IMHO, the market segments for disk drives are being polarized between what will be the low end HDD's and the high capacity, high performance server drives with a "no-mans land" in between. If a company plays in the no-mans land they will lose. Now focus on either extreme; the low cost segment or the high-end segment and stop diddling in between, and you will win. You can't de-populate a high end drive to serve the low cost marketplace (and all except Seagate and soon Conner are doing that) and you can't goose up a low cost drive to meet the high end. At least I don't think you can. The companies that recognize this and decide which one they will focus on, will be where I invest. Right now, that's Seagate. In the case of Seagate they have the horsepower to play well in both ends as they shut off the no-mans land stuff. Right now, Seagate can't ship enough of their single platter, 4.3 GB U4 disk drives to meet demand. Right now, Seagate's Cheetah and Barracuda drives are picking up the slack in the drop in demand for their "no-mans land" disk drives. (which, BTW, I'll define as a greater than 2 platter platform designed for the desktop). So they are starting to find their "groove". You also hit on another debated subject - where will the next demand for storage come??? I agree that Internet bandwidth will change the dynamic but I'm a bit worried there because as that happens some are saying our need or use of storage will actually shift to the Internet. If access to stuff will be so quick why worry about keeping the stuff on your computer when access to the stuff is mouse click away? Just not sure here. Then there's those "computing appliances". Not sure except for the digital VCR as a pull for HDDs. Computing appliances might be the hot thing for a SanDisk CompactFlash card, a Calluna Type II PCMCIA HDD, an Iomega Clik! or a IBM microdrive but I don't see too many Cheetahs being connected to my PDA, digital camera or RIO MP3 recorder. Regards, LT

To: Yogi - Paul who wrote (5927)	3/26/1999 7:49:00 PM
From: Frodo Baxter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

>there simply is not adequate demand for desktop storage capacity. Corporate buyers don't need it, home buyers don't need it, nobody needs it so technological achievement is going unrewarded. If you check out the improvements in areal density, you'll see that the pace has rapidly accelerated the past couple years. This is generally misunderstood, but it probably had a much greater effect on the decreasing average head and platter counts than did the huge, sudden growth of segment zero. btw, Maxtor is no longer a weak sister. After the secondary, they're actually pretty well capitalized.