Analysts: Industry Impacts of Western Digital Acquisition of Hitachi Storage

March 8, 2011

On Monday March 7 Western Digital (WD) announced that the company had reached an agreement to purchase Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) for $4.3 billion in cash and common stock. The deal has already been approved by both companies’ boards and is expected to close in the third quarter assuming regulatory approval.

HGST’s parent Hitachi will retain a 10% stake in the combined company and HGST’s current CEO, Steve Milligan, will be president of the new business reporting to WD president and CEO John Coyne. The merger will impact the HDD industry including component and equipment suppliers and change the landscape for enterprise SSDs.

Biggest in HDDs

From a unit shipment perspective WD and HGST are the largest and third largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs). Today Seagate remains the revenue leader, thanks to the company’s dominance of the enterprise SSD market. The pending merger will push WD’s revenues ahead of Seagate’s.

WD is already the unit shipment leader, having surpassed Seagate’s unit shipments over a year ago. Combined unit shipments for WD and HGST account for nearly 48% of the world HDD market.

Hitachi GST was formed by the merger of IBM and Hitachi’s HDD units in 2003. After many years of losses HGST turned profitable for most of the last two years. Although the division is profitable, Hitachi was rumored to have been looking to divest itself of its HDD unit for several years. In 2010 and even in 2009 rumors reported that Hitachi was shopping for a buyer for the division with WD mentioned as one of the suitors. WD was also rumored to have been interested in Fujitsu’s HDD business before that company was acquired by Toshiba.

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[FailCon] David Pogue: RIM BlackBerry Storm, A Piece O’ Crap (Video)

October 26, 2010

Why RIM failed the Blackberry Storm

During his keynote on consumer products failures, New York Times columnist David Pogue shared his personal RIM nightmare story with the audience here at FailCon.

For Pogue, RIM decided to ship the incomplete Blackberry Storm in the Fall of 2008 because it was under pressure to deliver it to Verizon for the start of the holiday season.

“It [Blackberry Storm] was horrible. It was a piece of crap. It was so filled with bugs, I will be on the phone every day with RIM… It just doesn’t work,” explains Pogue.

But what made this a complete disaster for RIM is it continuously denied that the Blackberry Storm had any problems, despite tons of consumer complaints on the Web and a devastating email Pogue received from one of the Storm team member:

“When you wrote that this product was released prematurely, you were absolutely right, and everybody here knew it… Internally, many of us argued that we would be hurting ourselves by rushing it out the door. Obviously, our managers disagreed,” reads the email.

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Logitech Unveils $300 Google TV Box (Video)

October 6, 2010

Logitech CEO unveils the Revue, the world's first Google TV set top box

At a press conference this morning Logitech CEO unveiled the world’s first Google TV set-top box.

The Revue is available today for “pre-order” online at Logitech.com, BestBuy.com, Amazon.com and, in 2 to the 3 weeks on retail shelves.

With this set-top box, the almost 30-year old company targets the 60 million HD TV households in the US.

“Google TV is the first platform that integrates the Web, broadcast TV and applications seamlessly,” said Logitech CEO Gerry Quindlen.

But at $300, the Logitech Revue is going to be a hard sell. So far, no manufacturers, including Apple, succeeded in selling a set-top box at this pricepoint.

So good luck with that!

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HP CTO Confirms Windows 7 & WebOS Slate Tablet Release (Video)

September 16, 2010

HP CTO Phil McKinney at the Demo Fall 2010 conference

The HP Slate mystery is finally solved.

At the Demo Fall 2010 conference earlier this week, HP CTO Phil McKinney confirmed that the Palo Alto, Calif.-company will launch 2 versions of its upcoming Slate tablet.

The Windows 7 version aimed at the enterprise market will hit the market by year’s end, while consumers will have to wait early next year, probably in the first quarter of 2011, for the WebOS-powered Slate.

“Based on customer feedback, that Slate is really the item that the enterprise customers want. They have many of the Win7 applications. We’ve got a number of customers in retail, healthcare and financial services that have specific Win7 applications and yet they want that portability factor. So the Win7 Slate that comes out later this year will be aimed at the enterprise corporate customer market,” explains McKinney.

More on the video below:

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EMC: Dell Needs Storage Specialist 3PAR More Than H-P

August 27, 2010

EMC President Pat Gelsinger weighs in on Dell and H-P's fight to buy data-storage company 3PAR

For EMC President Pat Gelsinger, HP would be able to better monetize the acquisition of storage company 3PAR than Dell because of its current strong position in the high-end enterprise market.

“Clearly they [HP] have a position in the enterprise. They should be able to sell that [3PAR]. But there are always integration issues,” explains Gelsinger. “I think HP has a better position to monetise it because of their stronger position higher in the enterprise. So if you look to who will get more value out of the 3PAR acquisition, I think HP is in better position. But that makes all that important for Dell.”

Despite the strong Dell/EMC partnership, Dell largely don’t have a product at that level, adds Gelsinger.

“So they have to extend their sales capabilities higher in the enterprise to be effective with it. It certainly makes it A fun sport to watch the competition. With HP’s board to prove that they are still active and can move forward despite their CEO.”

And from an EMC perspective, Dell would actually be a much better suitor.

“I would prefer 3PAR not being on HP’s hands because I think they can actually compete with us. They have a salesforce that could sell it,” confides the EMC executive.

If HP ends up acquiring 3PAR, it will certainly hurt its partnership with Hitachi – which currently supplies HP with high-end storage products. On the other hand, with or without 3PAR, EMC is commited to the Dell relationship.

“I certainly prefer that they [Dell] didn’t add this [3PAR] to the complexity of the mix. But wether they do it or not we’re going to be great partners with Dell,” adds Gelsinger.

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[Video] H-P To Expand Palm Smartphone Lineup; Extend WebOS To Printers, Netbooks

August 26, 2010

Inspite media reports, HP has no plans to shelve Palm smartphones.

“On the contrary,” insists Tim Pettitt, Palm’s senior product manager of smartphones at a briefing today in San Francisco, Calif. “Palm is going to be the mobility play for HP!”

Expect to see more smartphones coming from HP/Palm as well new mobile devices such as tablets/slates, printers and netbooks, all powered by the company’s mobile operating system, WebOS.

“Our goal is really to expand the form factor. We built WebOS to go on any device. So we knew we’re going to move off smartphones eventually… So definitely you’ll keep seeing things new coming out from Palm.”

It’ll be interesting to see if HP/Palm is able to break in the smartphone market, today dominated by Apple’s iPhone, Google Android and RIM. But you can forget about Nokia. The Finnish company just doesn’t get mobile Internet.

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Note To The Next H-P CEO: Don’t Use Porn Stars To Close Deals With High-Level Customers, Government

August 9, 2010

Although we don’t know the full story yet, the veil is slowly lifting over HP’s latest sex scandal.

HP CEO Mark Hurd hired an aging porn star to play a cute “femme de compagnie” a.k.a “hostess” for fellow “high-level” HP executives and “clients.”

Such a crucial position at HP that Hurd felt obliged to interview the “soft-core” porn star himself for the job. Pretty hands-on kind of guy for a quite button-down executive!

HP Way? Using porn stars to close deals

For sure, this is really raising some questions on exactly how some of these big IT deals are ‘closed’ at HP; which by the way announced better numbers than expected. Sweet!

However this interesting”menage a trois” [Hurd is married] didn’t seem to please HP’s board of directors presided by… Hurd himself!

In a following investigation, HP’s chief was accused of submitting inaccurate expense reports to the amount of $20,000 that the company says concealed his relationship with the porn star.

And voila! Instead of celebrating his $100 million renewal contract with HP, Hurd is fired with “only” $35 million in severance pay.

Not bad, considering that he’s now “off the hook” – having settled with this unknown actress that should remained unknown! – and has time to contemplate his next job… at IBM perhaps!

Shareholders: time to bring HP Board to Court!

Common HP, Mark Hurd is no Bill Clinton, who after all got to keep his job!

Worse, because of this “lack of judgement” HP shareholders lost cumulatively billions of dollars and should demand a full explananation from HP’s Board, and why not, sue them!

On a good note, the Hurd sex scandal bodes well for retired porn stars that should have no problem as hostesses for high-level executives in Corporate America! Viva capitalism!

TechPulse 360

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Opinion: Amazon To Drop Kindle 3 Price At $99 By Holidays

July 29, 2010

The new Kindle will reach mass market status at the magical $99 price point

As Amazon plans to release a cheaper Kindle next month, the smaller, lighter, faster, brighter e-reader will actually reach “mass market” status when its price drops below $100, instead of $139 today (Wi-Fi only).

“That’s the magic price point for consumers,” confirms Netgear CEO Patrick Lo. “Our retail experience shows that consumers are more willing to buy 2 products at $99 than one at $199.”

So my advice to you is that, if you’re not in a hurry to jump in the e-reader bandwagon of course, to simply wait until mid-December, to buy the Kindle 3 at a $40 discount.

That will also give you the time to evaluate other options, such as smartphones and more complete Tablet PCs – like the Apple iPad – that will lets you read e-books, browse the Web, check e-mails and much more.

But at $99, there’s hardly any reason not to treat yourself with one for Christmas!

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Is Apple Making iPhone 3G Totally Unusable To Force Upgrade?

July 28, 2010

The best thing an iPhone 3G user can do is to "downgrade" their not-so-smart phone !

Such customer disdain from Apple comes as no surprise.

It’s been a month since Apple released iOS 4 for iPhone 3G and 3GS and that consumers have been complaining – even on Apple’s discussion forums – of all sorts of problems directly related to the upgrade: unbearably slow, rapid battery drain or excessive heat!

And by the way, the upgrade to 4.0.1 doesn’t help either.

But the worse is Apple’s attitude. Just like with “Antennagate” Apple pooh-poohed criticisms, that is, until today. FINALLY! Steve, where are you? Still in Hawaii?

Apple is investigating reports that the latest iPhone operating system causes problems for users of the iPhone 3G, after a series of complaints on Apple support forums and technology blogs,” writes the Wall Street Journal online.

Here are examples of customer complaints.

But the iphone is very slow with IOS4. It doesn’t work as smooth as it used to be. Also new applications such as the iBook application are very slow, doesn’t respond smooth on screentaps etc.

This is absolutely ridiculous, the additions to the 3G handset are consolidation of email, a zoom to the camera and folders on the homepage….so why the **** has the handset slowed to snails pace??!

5 seconds to open the text window. Another 3 seconds to get a popup text input keyboard. 3 seconds to open the email window

This is such an outrageous situation that even the most loyal Apple fans are feeling that the Cupertino, Calif. is forcing them to upgrade to the iPhone 4 by making their iPhone 3G totally unusable!

“This phone has gone from being a dream to constantly annoying me. Not a way to make friends. I would upgrade to an iPhone 4, but I’m feeling pretty angry that Apple has forced my hand by making my 3G unusable,” wrote a user on the Apple support discussion forum.

So, Apple here’s YOUR roadmap for the next few weeks:

  1. Fix the iOS4 operating system or at least give your most loyal customers an option to downgrade to the older operating system!
  2. Fix the iPhone 4 antenna. Recall the whole damn thing and finally sell a flawless device that actually works the way it should;
  3. Fix the white iPhone 4  manufacturing and please stop lying about shipping dates
  4. Oh, and I forgot… and this one is for the boss… APOLOGIZE for all the trouble your lies caused to faithful fans and aggrieved customers!

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Analyst: Apple Must Fix iPhone Faulty Antenna Design

July 21, 2010

In a report published today, MobileTrax principal analyst Gerry Purdy calls Apple to fix the iPhone 4 faulty antenna design.

Apple will need to fix the faulty design of the iPhone antenna. I can assure you that the iPhone 5 won’t have that problem. It might have another problem, but it won’t continue the antenna problems in the iPhone 4. I’m confident that Apple engineering will ensure the future iPhone (and iPad) products will have antennas that work properly.

Apple’s faulty design has consumers wonder if they should buy Apple’s smartphone or not

It has been a real nightmare for Apple, certainly a cause for consternation with millions of iPhone customers, and perhaps a “Wait a minute, should I buy one of these?’ hesitation for a number of prospective iPhone buyers.

And the real winner of Apple’s “Antennagate” ? Antenna engineers!

Simply holding a device should not interfere in any significant way with the network signal reception. And Antennagate will cause other firms such as HTC, Motorola, RIM and Samsung to increase antenna design capabilities to ensure that they won’t have a repeat of the same problem as Apple experienced. It should be a ‘field day’ for antenna design consultants to help all SmartPhone manufacturers fix antenna problems.

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