Marc Jourlait, VP of segment marketing said that on completing the acquisition of archrival Maxtor Corp in May, Seagate said it would maintain the brand in the retail channel and honor existing warranties through the end of its first fiscal quarter at the end of September. Now we’re announcing we’re maintaining the brand, and in fact refreshing it in October, with the addition of a 2.5-inch laptop drive, he said.
The positioning will clearly differentiate between Maxtor, which will specifically target only the desktop and laptop markets with an economy proposition, and Seagate, which will address those and other markets with a more leading-edge and premium-priced offering. For example, there will not be a Maxtor version of the 750GB drive Seagate has recently announced, and only Seagate will offer the 128-bit encryption capability it embeds into its drives. Warranties will also reflect the difference: five years for Seagate, three for Maxtor.
Another area that will remain the presence of Seagate, at least while it is an emerging technology, is microdrives, where the company offers 1-inch and 1.9-inch devices for the sub-laptop market, going into cellphones, personal media players, and other small-form-factor devices like iPods.
Some of the definitions could change over time. If microdrives go so mainstream that Seagate feels a need to offer an economy version at some point, it should be able to de-feature the drives coming off the product line and call them Maxtor.
While the two companies’ channel partners will remain as they are today, Jourlait said there is the added possibility that Seagate VARs may want to take on a more economy offering to complement the Seagate line. Competitors still in the market are three Japanese companies (Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Toshiba) and one Korean company (Samsung). The union of Seagate and Maxtor results in a vendor of considerable clout, however. Seagate alone reckoned to have about 30% of the world market, and the acquisition means the joint share is almost double that, according to sector sources.
Scotts Valley, California-based Seagate also sees opportunities for extension of the premium brand into new verticals where hitherto only Maxtor was present. Jourlait cited video production and broadcasting, where magnetic disk is clearly moving in to handle the larger volumes that high-definition TV and computer graphics generate. It’s no coincidence that Seagate’s homepage currently sports two articles on how it is making inroads into the HDTV and Hollywood studio markets.
