day 16

what makes the world go 'round 3: the power of multimedia

There is an insatiable thirst for storage capacity in the land; perhaps it has something to do with those 10MB Adobe Photoshop files. According to estimates computed by the SpinDoctor and backed up by reputable research firms like Dataquest, Inc., the $200 1GB disk drive of 1996 will become the $250 10GB drive by the turn of the century. We are talking 1-2 millisecond access, gigabyte transfer rates, and dirt cheap prices. Disk drive capacity is expanding at almost 100% per year, a rate that will catapult today's 1 GB drive to the 10-20GB level by 2001 - a tenfold increase in little more than 4 years. You can expect to pay 0.4 cents/megabyte for a $200 drive within four or five years. Compare this with today's 40 cents/megabyte. Why has the disk drive industry been so successful? With numbers like these, we should ask why hasn't the disk drive industry been more successful? After all, capacities are running rampant, and this should feed the obsolescence factor. The multimedia craze creates demand for storage, the technology is running wild, yet where is the Intel of Disks? Who is the dominant disk drive maker? More trips to Fandango's to ponder these questions. Tomorrow we find out who owns the disk drive biz. We learn why one of the biggest mergers in disk drive history may shake the industry out of its rut. The making of the disk drive kingpin may be underway.

what makes the world go 'round: 1 2 3 4 5 Daily Dose Index