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Technology Stocks : Veeco Instruments-Who? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Donald B. Fuller who wrote (2083)	4/27/1999 11:57:00 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3069

Donald, I can't begin to give any precise statistics on how many drives are using GMR now, but the number is still pretty miniscule. The transition is just now beginning, and, according to other sources on SI (see Disk Drive thread), while the transition was supposed to be easy relative to the MR transition that has just taken place, there have been some stumbles. IBM is probably the leader right now. QNTM and MXTR may have some first generation GMR drives out there, but if they are there, they just started shipping. I think WDC announced that they have started to ship some enterprise GMR drives, but again the volumes are low. Everyone has pretty much said that the second half of CY99 is when the real transition will take place. Which probably means that equipment orders to VECO are in place right now. In two years, probably almost every drive will be GMR, or whatever the next Great Thing will be.

To: Donald B. Fuller who wrote (2083)	4/28/1999 12:06:00 AM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3069

Don I think the evidence is that they didn't really lose IBM. VECO's sales surely would have shown an impact had they lost an account that represented 17% of sales in 1998. Also, ZIGO surely would have shown better sales than they did had they gained additional sales from IBM. Apparently ZIGO did finally get an AFM order this quarter for an IBM AFM, but that is the extent of it, so far as I can see. I agree that VECO has done as well as can reasonably be expected. Carl

To: Donald B. Fuller who wrote (2083)	4/28/1999 9:14:00 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 3069

Donald, FWIW: transition to GMR In their CC last night, QNTM said that they will ship in volume their first GMR product this quarter, and that they will be 100% GMR by the end of the year. I don't recall if they meant by that the end of the calendar year or the end of their fiscal year (ends March, so it doesn't make a lot of difference). They also said that they don't know what the plans of their competitors are, but suspected that many of them won't be 100% by year end, but the transition is inevitable.