Wow, these HDD manufactures bounce around so much it's hard to keep up.
This one will certainly be interesting.
There were reports that Maxtor was losing money and their CEO and
other managers resigned last year. They were having production
problems and of course everyone was bashing them.
If you read the blurbs on them this year there was hope of recovery
with a narrowing loss but the NT Times aticle today says they were
slow in getting into hot growth fields like small HDs in Notebooks and
even smaller ones for portable devices where the real growth was. So
I guess they figured it would be easier to sell out.
Seagate they say thinks they can iron out the production problems and
with the increased manufacturing capacity/economies of scale can save
$300 mil a year.
They listed Seagate as no 1 and WD no 2 with Maxtor no 3 in the HD
mkt.
Of course for people into the big picture like us ---- we ask , how
is this going to effect rebate sales at Compusa , BB and CC ?
Wil Seagate feel they have a large enough base that they dont have to
be as aggressive about deals? And then theres a chain reaction with WD
and Hitachi?
Maxtor used to be the only super aggressive HD maker which was doing
rebate sales for years at Compusa until WD starting slowly getting
into it and then Seagate and finally Hitachi.
