Friday, August 6, 2010

Tech stocks falter, Notion VTec weighs

KUALA LUMPUR: TECHNOLOGY []-related counters including Notion VTec, Eng Teknologi, Unisem and MPI fell in the late afternoon trade as sentiment continued to be weighed down by the negative outlook for the hard disk drive (HDD) industry.

At 3.23pm, Notion was down 16 sen to RM2.04, with 2.99 million shares done while JCY was unchanged at RM1.24.

Chip maker Unisem fell nine sen to RM2.13 and MPI lost three sen to RM5.88. Eng Tek, which supplies parts for the chip sector, lost 11 sen to RM1.84.

Notion VTec has extended its losses in recent weeks, weighed down by concerns about the slowdown in the HDD industry. Notion VTec announced a set of weaker earnings and stayed cautious about the fourth quarter.

Its larger competitor JCY was flat at RM1.24.

There has been growing concern about the impact that solid state drives (SSD) will have on the HDD market.

Wkipedia explains SSD is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. SSDs are distinguished from traditional HDDs which are electromechanical devices containing spinning disks and movable read/write heads.

SSDs, in contrast, use microchips, and contain no moving parts. Compared to traditional HDDs, SSDs are typically less susceptible to physical shock, quieter, and have lower access time and latency. SSDs use the same interface as hard disk drives, thus easily replacing them in most applications.

As of 2010, most SSDs use NAND-based flash memory, which retains memory even without power. SSDs using volatile random-access memory (RAM) also exist for situations which require even faster access, but do not necessarily need data persistence after power loss.


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