History (1998): BMI Bounces Back From Belfort, France, to Shenzhen, China

Nothing and no one seems to be able to stop Bisser Dimitrov, former CEO of the now-defunct Gigastorage (Belfort, France), who is now introducing himself as BMI’s (Los Gatos, CA) president and CEO.

His plans for a 5.25-inch HDD drive still under his arms. Dimitrov says that he has convinced Great Wall of China, a big Chinese computer company, to assemble his drives in Shenzhen.

“The current production is 60,000 units per month, and it will progress to 100,000 in May and 250,000 in September,” he said. “Current drives are 3.5GB per platter, with 1, 2 or 3 platters. We will soon introduce a new line with 4GB per platter.“

For the current 1-platter units, Dimitrov cites an OEM price of $128, $135 through distributors.

Dimitrov, who, after all, is a specialist in raising money, explains that the working capital of BMI, including loans, etc., is now at $100 million, a large part coming from Great Wall, which holds 25% of BMI. This is not Great Wall’s first brush within the storage industry, however, since last year a joint venture was formed, under the name Shenzhen Hailiang Storage Products Co., between IBM, China Great Wall Computer Shenzhen and Shenzhen Kaifa Technology Company, to manufacture MR head gimbal assemblies.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 123 on April 1998 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: BMI was dissolved in 2001.