If you listened to Deutsche Bank in the past few months, you've already lost 60-70% of your $$. The fact is STEC is facing stiff competition down the road, its next Q's earning might not be affected, but in the longer run there is no escaping. You're living in lala-land if you believe a sector enjoying 40-50% gross margin will be forever free of competition.


"Pliant Technology earlier this week announced that it was launching storage drives called Enterprise Flash Drives, or EFDs for the enterprise SSD market. STEC (STEC) had previously made the only EFDs for the SSD, or solid state drive market. Pliant's SSDs compare favorably to STEC's high-end ZeusIOPS line, according to EnterpriseStorageForum.com. Pliant contends that its EFDs are "an ideal solution for write intensive enterprise applications," while existing SSDs limit workloads. "Flash-based storage has the potential to impact data centers in very positive ways, but cost and reliability concerns persist among enterprise IT managers seeking to leverage SSD technology," said Jeff Janukowicz, the research manager for Solid State Drives at IDC. "SSD solutions, such as Pliant’s Lightning EFDs that can help address these concerns by delivering high reliability, efficiency and predictable performance, will help fuel the mainstream enterprise adoption of flash storage over the next few years," he added. "