Western Digital 2001 Annual Report Download - page 7

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 7 of the 2001 Western Digital annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 82

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82

Western Digital continues to win accolades for quality and responsiveness from our major PC OEM
customers and channel partners. Once again we were awarded the Channel Champions honor in the desktop
hard drive category by Computer Reseller News magazine – the only hard drive manufacturer to be so recognized
in the ten year history of these awards. We are confident that we can
continue to earn business from reseller partners and from major PC
OEMs such as Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Apple, NEC and
Gateway by consistently placing among the first to market and first to
volume with reliable, high-quality hard drives backed by industry-
leading service.
Also providing confidence in our future is the company’s progress
and the industry’s promise with non-PC applications of hard drives,
clearly the most promising incremental growth opportunity for the hard
drive business since the integration of hard drives into PCs. Western
Digital has been awarded a multi-year contract with Microsoft to
supply hard drives for its Xbox™video game system, expected to debut
in the 2001 holiday season. We are also working with leaders in the
cable, satellite and set-top box industries such as Scientific-Atlanta,
DirecTV, Philips, Motorola and Sony as they design hard drive
technology into their future products. The predicted rapid spread of hard drive applications in these and other
consumer electronics products means tremendous new opportunities to diversify Western Digital’s markets and
revenue streams.
Western Digital is the sole independent hard drive supplier that focuses exclusively on EIDE products, so
the company is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the rapidly growing application of EIDE drives in the entry-
level server and workstation markets, previously the sole domain of
SCSI drives. We also have extensive knowledge of the enterprise storage
market. By 2004, IDC forecasts that EIDE drives sold into the
enterprise market will exceed 7.5 million, versus less than 1.2 million in
2001. Several factors are driving this trend, including price, favorable
client workload performance, emerging EIDE applications for
workstations and servers, and advances of the Serial ATA interface that
eliminate old barriers to SCSI replacement.
Reduction in
CONVERSION CYCLE
FY1999
16 days
FY2000 FY2001
(10.0)
(5.0)
0.0
5.0
10.0
15.0
20.0
(1) day
(7) days
Western Digital's negative 7-day conversion cycle
is among the best in the hard drive industry.
Conversion cycle measures how quickly the
company is able to turn its net investments in
inventory, accounts receivable and accounts
payable into cash.
Western Digital has been awarded a multi-year
contract with Microsoft to supply hard drives for its
Xbox™video game system.