Melissa Bockhold Heather Coddington - Franklin College

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Worldwide Hard Disk Drive Industry Historical Performance & Projections (1991-2003E)
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997
Years
1998 1999 2000E 2001E 2002E 2003E
Total Revenue
In the graphs above, we can see that total unit sales have steadily grown between
1991 and 1999 due to an increase in worldwide demand for disk drive storage. The
demand, however, is not growing fast enough to keep prices stable. Looking at the graph
of total revenues, it is clear that revenues have not followed the same steady, upward
trend. Prices have been driven down so far that, even with stable growth in unit sales,
revenues are unsteady and often decline from year to year. Pricing competition among
disk drive manufacturers has created this trend, and industry experts expect it to continue
(Andrade 3).
C. Marketing and Sales Structure
Competition among disk drive manufacturers is also prevalent in the industry
because suppliers sell to the limited number of customers. Each product cycle, lasting six
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