News

posted on 25 March 2008 10:39

---

In an interview reported in Fortune Seagate CEO Bill Watkins said he was prepared to sue Intel and Samsung if flash drives became too popular. He also said Seagate was selling products so consumers could buy crap and watch porn.

In the interview Watkins said that flash drives as used in the MacBook Air were just too expensive, with hard drives offering more capacity for much less money, saying: "Realistically, I just don’t see the flash notebook sell. We just don’t see the proposition.”

He didn't address the superior I/O rates of flash drives compared to Seagate's own hard drives though.

Also, just in case notebook buyers don't agree with him and flash sold state drives (SSDs) take off ghen Seagate and Western Digital own patents, he asserted, that cover how SSDs from Intel and Samsung link to host computers.

One thing that could hurry flash adoption is much increased capacity for the money. Intel has said it will aggressively increase capacity and pursure SSD business.

It's not so much 'if' SSDs become popular for notebooks and desktops but 'when.' Watkins did not mention any technical problems that could stop the SSD onrush, such as inadequate wear-levelling. Nor did he say how HDD technology could counter SSD advantages.

Attempting to play the legal delaying game against Intel and Sansung wouldn't affect Toshiba. If the SSD tide is going to wash over the HDD business then, as Watkins advises other CEOs feeling battered by Sarbanes-Oxley; "Get over it."

It appears that Bill Watkins can play many roles in public, ranging from King Canute to mercurial devil's advocate. But, in private, he knows, I'm sure, that it's entirely possible flash SSD could decimate the 1.8-inch HDD business, as it has the 1-inch microdrive business, and has already invaded the 2.5-inch turf.

Without HDD technology price/performance advantages, meaning speed parity or vastly lower prices, then the 2.5-inch market will adopt SSDs too. Then 3.5-inch HDD markets could be invaded as well. Seagate is potentially facing the biggest-ever threat to its business. This legal action threat is likely to be hot air or just a delaying tactic.

For someone has said that Seagate will get into the SSD business itself.

In August last year, IDC spokesperson Sumner Lemon predicted that Seagate would do this some time in 2008: "We have solid-state drives on every road map that we have," said, wait for it ... by Bill Watkins, Seagate CEO. Go figure.

This from a man who now says he just doesn't get the flash drive proposition?

In the Fortune interview Watkins also said that the the HDD business had a lot of consumer focus in it and that a terrabyte drive plus consumer-oriented products would be readied for the Consumer Electronics Show or thereabouts.

(Read more on Seagate's flash SSD intentions here.)

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}