Other Wall Street analysts say Hitachi is now visibly suffering at the hands of EMC's Symmetrix DMX array, which EMC introduced in February 2003. "We believe it will be particularly important for HDS to continue to broaden its storage product line and strengthen its software offering to match moves by EMC," says Harry Blount, analyst at Lehman Brothers.
It wasn't all bad news for Hitachi: Its midrange Thunder storage family saw relative strength in the quarter, with shipments growing 25 percent sequentially. "The company is selling more Thunders (midrange) now that the company is no longer supply-constrained on this product," notes Seyrafi.
In addition, analysts point out that both Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) last month extended their OEM agreements with Hitachi, indicating that its partners are confident in the Lightning roadmap in the years ahead (see HP, Hitachi Renew Vows and Sun: We Still Love Hitachi, Too!).
Hitachi is expected to introduce a new high-end Lightning array in the first half of 2004. Unfortunately, that will be too late to stem the losses the company is currently experiencing in the market.
Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch
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