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Subject: Re: Just found out Quantum merged with Maxtor
Name:
 ludicrous
Date: 8/3/2001 5:19:05 PM (GMT-7)
IP Address: 138.67.71.229
In Reply to: Just found out Quantum merged with Maxtor posted by
Stimp
Message:
Remaining vendors in the desktop hard drive market include IBM, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital.
Interestingly enough, following the merger of Quantum's HD unit into Maxtor, IBM was predicting that Samsung and WD would be the next to go.
Maxtor obviously won't go anywhere, they have a large number of OEM contracts; IBM of course has enough cash to outlast the current margins fight and has server contracts, and Seagate has a significant presence in the server-class SCSI market.
Samsung I do wonder about, true the Korean parent does have other businesses to draw on but then, they are also in DRAM which is not pretty right now -- except they currently have nearly all of the Rambus DRAM market under their wing, which probably helps -- so who knows?
Western Digital, considering they buy many of their drive internals from IBM, and probably have a much smaller slice of the OEM market than anyone else, I do kind of wonder how they stand to make any money right now...
Assuming worst-case, we would be left with only IBM, Maxtor, and Seagate. Not a problem for the consumer in the current market, but when the next market upturn finally occurs I wonder what that will do to pricing.
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