Seagate 2003 Annual Report Download - page 10

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Table of Contents
Sales, Marketing and Customer Service
Our sales organization focuses on deepening our relationship with our customers. The worldwide sales group focuses on geographic
coverage of OEMs and distributors throughout most of the world. The worldwide sales group is organized regionally among North America,
Japan, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) and Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In addition, we have a sales operation group which focuses on
aligning our production levels with customers’ product requirements. Our sales force works directly with our marketing organization to
coordinate our OEM and distribution channel relationships. Also, we are currently expanding our direct sales to retailers. We maintain sales
offices throughout the United States and in Australia, China, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.
Our marketing organization works to increase demand for our rigid disc drive products through strategic collaboration with key OEM
customers to align our respective product roadmaps and to build our brand and end- customer relationships. This organization is comprised of
our strategic marketing, business development and marketing communications groups. Our strategic marketing group coordinates with our
research and development group to align our product development roadmap to meet key OEM customers’ technology requirements over the
long term. Our business development group coordinates the qualification of new products with OEMs, determines product pricing and provides
product service and support. Our marketing communications group focuses on building the Seagate brand name among our OEM and
distribution channel customers.
We warrant our products for periods ranging from one year to five years, and on July 26, 2004, we announced the introduction of our
five-year warranty, effective June 1, 2004, on every Seagate internal PC, notebook and enterprise disc drive shipped through our distribution
and retail channels.
Foreign sales are subject to foreign exchange controls and other restrictions, including, in the case of some countries, approval by the
Office of Export Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce and other U.S. governmental agencies.
Competition
The rigid disc drive industry is intensely competitive, with manufacturers competing for a limited number of major customers. Some of
the principal factors used by customers to differentiate among rigid disc drive manufacturers are:
•
storage capacity;
•
price per unit and price per gigabyte;
•
storage/retrieval access times;
•
data transfer rates;
•
product quality and reliability;
•
production volume capability;
•
form factor; and
•
responsiveness to customer preferences and demands.
We believe that our products are generally competitive with respect to each of these factors in the markets that we currently address. We
summarize below our principal competitors, the effect of competition on price erosion for our products and product life cycles and technology.
Principal Competitors . We have experienced and expect to continue to experience intense competition from a number of domestic and
foreign companies, some of which have greater financial and other resources
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