Computer Industry Financial News February 2011 Article Seagate entertainment, external drives, Western Digital My Book, Dell battery slices

Computer Industry Financial News February 2011

The Computer Industry is continuing to work its way through a Global Economic Recession. Geographical trends related to product demand persist. Some hardware manufacturers weathered the financial storm of 2009 and 2010 by making modifications to their business strategies. Seagate, Western Digital, and Dell are continuing to invest in innovation and pump out new products while making strategic moves to better navigate through a volatile global marketplace. In 2010, many technology demands originate from both home life and mobile lifestyles.

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Seagate continued to re-organize with a trending emphasis on their sales strategy in late 2009. Seagate's 2nd fiscal quarter of the 2011 year ended December 31, 2010. In 2009 Seagate reported a net loss of approximately ($3086) million. Seagate reported net income of $159 million for the quarter that ended on December 31, 2010. Seagate seems to have rebounded from the worker lay offs and restructuring that took place in 2008 and 2009 (fiscal years).

In a 2009 article, written by Trade Federation Inc., it was suggested that Seagate could rebound in 2010. Heading into March of 2011, the stock market activity seems to have stabilized.

Stock symbol: STX (NASDAQ)
Date: February 2, 2011 (1:00 PM ET)

Open $27.60
Day Low $13.90
Day High $14.36
52 Week Low $9.84
52 Week High $21.58

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Seagate has updated product lines that enhance the home and personal lifestyles. The home has become more sophisticated over the last decade bringing more options and a greater variety of content to people.

Hard Drive capabilities have blossomed in the home and entertainment segments of the digital storage market. When it comes to home solutions in 2011, The FreeAgent® GoFlex™ TV HD Media Player (part number: STAJ100) is currently on the Seagate menu. This product was a 2011 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Innovation honoree. The media player was also displayed in the 2011 Innovations Design and Engineering Showcase inside of the Grand Lobby at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Serving up... ...Entertainment.

The current storage capacity range for the FreeAgent Drive line is 250GB through 3TB. The line features 5 flavors: Go, GoFlex, GoFlex Pro, GoFlex Ultra-Portable, FreeAgent Desk, and GoFlex Desk. These hard drives use the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 interfaces to connect to your devices. These drives and other products also combine with Seagate TVs, HD Media players, and Digital Video Recorders.

Featured products on Seagate.com 2/2/2011:

GoFlex Ultra-Portable Drives

Seagate STAA1000103
Seagate STAA500105
Seagate STAA1500100
Seagate STAA1000101
Seagate STAA750101

GoFlex Desk External Drives

Seagate STAC3000101
Seagate STAC2000103
Seagate STAC1000101
Seagate STAC3000100
Seagate STAC2000100
Seagate STAC1000100

GoFlex Pro Ultra-Portable Drives

Seagate STAD750102
Seagate STAD500102
Seagate STAD750100
Seagate STAD500100

Western Digital (WD) had peaks and valleys in 2010. Back in January of 2011, WD delivered some financial news that helped shed some light. It looks like 2010 sized up for Western Digital and that their 2011 fiscal year is also lining up. WD has also identified a geographical shift in demand. WD is putting emphasis on product lines that address the needs of their Enterprise Customers.

Western Digital brought home a net income of $225 million in the 2nd fiscal quarter of 2011, which ended on December 31, 2010. "We are pleased to deliver better-than-expected revenues, profitability and gross margin in the December quarter, reflecting solid execution and an improvement in hard drive industry conditions compared with the prior two quarters," said John Coyne, president and chief executive officer. "The opportunity for profitable growth in our industry remains tremendous and we are committed to improving our financial performance over the longer term. We plan to do so with a continued emphasis on our industry-leading low-cost structure, high quality, highly reliable and highly available products, and a sharp focus on matching production with true customer demand."

Back in 2008 WD show their geographic product distribution spread fairly evenly across major regions. Just over half (52%) of the total revenue generated by Western Digital by the 3rd quarter of 2010 came from Asia. Entering into the 3rd quarter of 2011 (fiscal), Western Digital shows the Asian market demanding 53% of available products.

WD reported that almost half (49%) of the total revenue for Q3 in 2010 was generated via OEM channel sales. Although WD has hands in a variety of technology sectors, enterprise customers have been important. In January of 2011, WD announced an expansion in their SAS hard drive lines. WD's second-generation S25 SAS drives and the latest WD RE SAS 3.5-inch drives for the traditional enterprise market are Shipping now. The new 2.5-inch, 10,000 RPM, WD S25 with SAS 6 Gb/s interface hard drives offer high-performance storage with capacities at 450 GB and 600 GB.

SAS hard drives are commonly used by large companies and companies that offer technical services. Such businesses tend to use resource intensive applications. SAS hard drives have been a preferred option due to their quality. "Over the past three years, SAS has established itself as the preferred interface for HDDs in servers and enterprise storage systems, representing more than 50 percent of all HDDs shipped for enterprise applications in 2010," said John Rydning, research director, hard disk drives at IDC. "The performance, scalability, and reliability of SAS will result in more than two-thirds of HDDs shipping with a SAS interface for enterprise applications by 2014."

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Featured products on WesternDigital.com 2/3/2010:

SAS drives (10000 rpm)

Western Digital WD6000BKHG
Western Digital WD4500BKHG
Western Digital WD3000BKFG
Western Digital WD1460BKFG

SAS drives (7200 rpm)

Western Digital WD2000FYYG
Western Digital WD1000FYYG

More about SAS

Whole computer systems and digital solutions? Dell Inc. is on the scene. At the same time, it has been a bumpy ride for investors. Dell continues to think outside the box or at least about the box. In terms of sales focus, Dell has put mobility at the top of their list.

On the 12-month graph, stock prices at Dell look like a roller coaster ride. The prices have started leveling overall.

Stock symbol: DELL (NASDAQ)
Date: February 2, 2011 (4:00 PM ET)

Open $13.41
Day Low $13.39
Day High $13.78
52 Week Low $11.34
52 Week High $17.52

Innovation is still at work over at Dell. Back in December of 2008, Dell pledged to revolutionize packaging. This pledge came out of the need to save money and global pressure to make environmentally friendly business decisions. In 2010, Dell began making some of their packaging from mechanically pulped bamboo. The bamboo comes from a Forest Stewardship Council-certified bamboo forest in China. The packaging will compost and biodegrade in an active compost pile. There are several benefits specifically associated with bamboo. Bamboo is among the fastest growing woody plants, bamboo’s tensile strength is similar to that of steel. We checked back in with Dell and they have maintained the practice and have continued promoting the concept in 2011.

In February of 2011, Dell placed a mobile product in the first slot of their home page banner rotation. The number one slot featured a 4G tablet (Streak 7). The banner tag line suggests that families will gather around the tablet. Laugh now but this may be true. Convertible? Yah ! Now Dell is offering the Inspiron Duo. Switch from touch to type in an instant. Essentially your tablet attaches to a keyboard that has an empty LCD slot, on a hinge. It basically looks like a laptop/notebook when you attach the tablet to the Inspiron Duo.