Western Digital 2000 Annual Report Download - page 3

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Fellow Shareholders:
Western Digital Corporation’s fiscal year 2000 was a year of renewal. The company gained new
management leadership with a commitment to growth and margin expansion; substantially improved its
performance and results in the personal storage business; found exciting new ways to apply its proven
core competencies to emerging applications; and launched new operations and products to serve
completely new markets, including network-attached storage, storage area network management, and
supply chain intelligence.
Western Digital’s traditional hard drive manufacturing operations met
numerous challenges last year, including intense competition, sharp price
cutting and occasional component shortages. In the Autumn of 1999, we
carried out a recall of hard drives containing a faulty chip that might have
failed under intensive, long-term use — a voluntary recall that
demonstrated our brand's commitment to data integrity and further
secured our excellent customer relations, but disrupted normal
shipments for several quarters.
Our determined and energetic workforce met these challenges
with improvements in quality, innovation and market
responsiveness. To earn back business, WD accelerated product
development in desktop hard drives, regaining its competitive
time-to-market performance in 5400 RPM drives, and
leading the industry with its 7200 RPM designs. Western
Digital was first to market with a 7200 RPM, 10 GB-
per-platter desktop drive, and repeated this performance
with the 20 GB-per-platter drive.
LETTER TO OUR
SHAREHOLDERS