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: Z Analyzer who wrote (5946)	3/27/1999 10:48:00 AM
From: Henry W Singor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Have you guys taken into account the cost of qual'ing a drive? PC manufacturers may not be interested in qual'ing a drive that has limited capacity. It is my understanding that if you qual a drive family you are left with the option of shipping the pc with a 1, 2 or 3 platter version of the drive. Thus you can offer your customers the option of say 4.3GB storage on the base model or 6.4GB or 8.4GB or 13GB for an additional fee. Some PC vendors may shy away from drive families that are limited to 8.4GB because the lack of the 13GB option makes the whole PC look like it is limited. By the way, I like the grasping for straws tone that most of these posts are taking. We are trying to find a concrete reason for the pounding that these companies have taken when one really does not exist. This is the blackness that has signaled a dawn around the corner in the past. Henry

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (5946)	3/27/1999 11:28:00 AM
From: Henry W Singor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

As PC prices fall the laws of supply and demand tell us that the number of pcs shipped will increase. That means the number of hard drives shipped will also increase. A lot of the increase will go to the low cost segment of the market but if other people shop like I do, they will be attracted by the low price and end up paying a little more for a faster processor, a little more for more disk space, a little more for more memory, a little more for a larger monitor and so on. So that they went shopping because PC's had gotten to under $1000 but after doing some research decided they couldn't live without the better components and ended up spending $1700. So PC prices are down but unit shipments will go up and that is good for both the PC industry and also the hard drive industry. Henry

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (5946)	3/27/1999 6:46:00 PM
From: Stitch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

<<If WDC is using TSA in any volume, its news to me also. Are you referring to perhaps a low volume IBM drive design drive?>> I had in mind WDC's “Expert” 7200 RPM family of drives based on IBM technology. I had thought they were using TSA but I may be wrong. I hope to check this Monday and clear up any confusion I have caused. <<It's easy to think the whole industry has gone wrong, but would Hutchinson really get one weeks notice from every drive maker at the same time? >> <<Due to demand issues or production problems. High end , notebook, desktop? –Z I actually do not think the “whole industry has gone wrong”. There is still brisk sales at the high end for corporate IMO. According to a just released report from Gruntal Seagate will still show very strong high end sales. However Wayne Fortun's comments during the HTCH CC was that their push out of orders is across the board, even affecting their conventional backlog. If you consider what we are seeing from RDRT and HTCH with what I am hearing from DD guys and what we are hearing from the PC guys it is relatively simple. There is a PC order slowdown. Remember that we are on a much shorter fuse then before. In a perverse sort of way, it may be good news. Depends on what we hear from the channel. If the guys are channel stuffing then we have learned squat! <<MHO, 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..>> I actually am not sure what this means. But if LT suggests that High Performance desktop is going away then I disagree also. In fact, what is happening is that serious desktop users are going to move to the 7200 RPM performers much more rapidly then previous migrations IMO. This class of product is a 7200 RPM, Ultra ATA, 10 GB minimum and it will be the so-called “sweet spot” very soon IMO. Best, Stitch