History 2000: Komag to Dissolve Asahi Komag

Asahi Komag Co., Ltd. (AKCL) will be dissolved in March 2001 and will thus abandon the HDD media business, according to Pixie Pinnacle.

AKCL was a joint venture founded in 1987 between Komag, which held 50%, Asahi Glass and Vacuum Metallurgical Company. The firm produced disks at its manufacturing facility in Yonezawa, Japan.

Its business has seldom been profitable, however, and relations between Asahi and Komag have deteriorated recently.

For the first 9 months of 2000, cumulative losses were $16.2 million. Its market share fell to roughly 5% of WW rigid disk media sales, according to analyst firm Trendfocus, with an output of 5 to 6 million disks per quarter.

The 2 partners were also allied in another joint-venture, Dastek, to produce thin-film heads, but that partnership dissolved in late 1993.

Asahi and Komag were also together as investors in head maker Headway Technology. There again, the enterprise was not successful. In fact, Asahi and Komag even took each other to court over an IP complaint involving the technology of certain glass substrates.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 155 on December 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.