In following the hard drive industry these days, leaders of those companies (Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi) seem to think that there will always be a place for the standard spinning hard drive in most desktop computers, servers and laptop systems. If this statement were true in 2004, is it still true today? Sure -- but the tide is changing, albeit slowly.

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) needs fast access times, less power consumption and no moving parts. The speed and moving parts differences are huge. Although SSD capacities (32 Gigabyte for now) are not near the capacity of a standard 80 or 120 Gigabyte traditional hard drives, there are quite a few advantages.

One is not cost, though, as these smallish 32 Gigabyte drives run off the shelf for $350 (Dell charges $549). But, the signal Dell is giving here is that some customers may prefer these drives, regardless of cost. With more and more laptop computers being sold as "desktop replacements," the only thing not keeping up is the traditional hard drive.

Is Dell poised to one-up the competition with newer (and faster) laptop computer storage devices? Heck, it needs something to kick start sales again after being pummeled by Hewlett-Packard recently. Perhaps this is part of the solution. Now, if Dell can only justify the higher prices of its systems that contain these SSDs, the company may be onto something, eh? Its stock price needs a lift, and to get there, so do its sales.

Platters spinning at 5,400 RPM don't cut the mustard with newer dual-core computer processors and fast RAM. Customers demand more, and if traditional hard drives are lagging, SSD will enter the picture quite rapidly, As it does, prices will fall and companies like Seagate and Western Digital may find themselves a bit surprised.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: IBM Corp (IBM), Wendy's Internatioanl (WEN), Yahoo! (YHOO), Western Digital Corp (WDC) and TD AmeriTrade Holding Corp (AMTD) were today's noteworthy downgrades.

• IBM Corp (NYSE: IBM) was cut to Neutral from Buy at Goldman to reflect the slowdown in domestic technology spending. Credit Suisse downgraded shares of IBM Corp to Neutral from Outperform and ThinkEquity cut IBM to Accumulate from Buy on the same rationale.

• Wendy's International (NYSE: WEN) was downgraded to Underperform from Market Perform at Wachovia, citing valuation.

• Needham downgraded Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) to Hold from Buy on valuation and the firm's belief that the 2H07 acceleration implied in consensus revenue forecasts could be difficult to exceed given the recent slowdown in display ad growth.

• WR Hambrecht downgraded shares of Western Digital (NYSE: WDC) to Hold from Buy as the firm believes there could be more downside to forward estimates given the aggressive pricing and softer demand environment. The firm sees too many industry risks following Seagate Technology's (STX) earnings conference call.

• Keefe Bruyette cut TD AmeriTrade (NASDAQ: AMTD) to Market Perform from Outperform.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• Raymond James and BMO Capital downgraded U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) to Market Perform from Outperform following its Q1 report.

• First Albany downgraded Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Inc (NASDAQ: JOSB) to Sell from Neutral.

• ThinkEquity cut Evergreen Solar, Inc (NASDAQ: ESLR) to Source of Funds from Accumulate on valuation.

• Matrix USA downgraded SI International, Inc (NASDAQ: SINT) to Sell from Neutral.

• Goldman Sachs cut Intervac, Inc (NASDAQ: IVAC) to Sell from Neutral.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

In the hard drive industry, the price of the product seems to go down in an inversely proportionate way with the amount of storage capacity offered as time goes by. That is, every half-year or so, the amount of storage offered at a certain price goes up, or the price per product goes down. Call it Moore's Law, but in this case, it has accelerated even more than PC processors if you can believe that.

I mean, come on -- half a terabyte (500 gigabytes) for under $160 right now? Only two years ago, that amount of storage would have cost three times that or even more. With the cost of hard drive storage continuing to plummet with no end in sight, will that kind of data recording technology be around for a while? When looking at the equally-plummeting cost of flash-based storage, some have predicted the demise of the hard drive. Hogwash, I say -- data centers and even high-end PCs and home entertainment DVRs (like TiVo boxes) will be using hard drives for quite some time, even as lower-capacity needs like laptop hard drives and digital music players adopt more flash memory than traditional hard drives.

Reason? Cost per amount of storage. Even with flash memory having no moving parts and being quite a bit faster than hard drives, neither of those drives the transition from one storage technology to another like price does. In fact, aren't hard drives pretty darn reliable right now? For the technology inside them (which could rival the best engineering on earth in some cases), hard drives are amazingly resilient. Sure there are failures due to moving parts inside. But, as long as huge capacities are demanded by the market and the lowest price is required, hard drives aren't going anywhere fast.

MOST NOTEWORTHY:

• Hard-disk drive makers Western Digital Corporation (NYSE: WDC) and Xyratex Ltd (NASDAQ: XRTX) were upgraded by Citigroup to Buy from Hold to reflect improving fundamentals; namely easing concerns related to inventory levels and pricing.
• New Century Financial Corporation (NYSE: NEW) was upgraded by UBS to Neutral from Reduce. UBS said New Century's credit outlook is reflected in the shares and its liquidity risk is ok near-term.
  
• The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) was upgraded by Morgan Stanley to Overweight from Equal Weight on valuation and improving fundamentals, with a price target of $56.

OTHER UPGRADES:

• Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) was upgraded by Merrill Lynch to Buy from Sell.

When it comes to the hard drive industry, there has rarely been an example of more cutthroat competition, price drops, mergers and hard-toothed business practices in a single industry. There were over 70 hard drive companies in the late 70s and 80s -- and now you can count the number of companies on a couple of hands. Good reading on this subject is The Innovator's Dilemma.

With industry leader Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX) buying competitor Maxtor in 2004, there are now just a few companies in this space -- Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba and some smaller players. What the market forgets sometimes is that the Internet, DVRs, iPods, and a myriad of other things could not exist without the hard drive -- it has the cost, speed and flexibility to meet these products' demands.

But hold your applause -- while Seagate CEO Bill Watkins says that traditional hard drive technology may be co-existing with Flash technology (chips, not spinning disks), Sandisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK) has released a flash-based hard drive for use in laptops and other similar devices. Will flash-based storage technology ever be as cheap and flexible as those spinning drives inside the PC you're reading this post on? Who knows -- except maybe Sandisk and memory leaders like Hynix and Samsung. By 2010, we'll probably see if co-existence or replacement of one technology with another happens. Place your bets.

[Disclosure: I own STX shares as of 1-4-06]

MOST NOTEWORTHY: JDS Uniphase (JDSU-old, JDSUD), Western Digital (WDC) and MGM Mirage (MGM) top today's list of upgrades.

• JDS Uniphase Corp. (NASDAQ:JDSUD) was upgraded to Strong Buy from Buy at Needham. They believe the worst is over for JDSU and see upside to near-term estimates after the company's profitable first-quarter results. JDS Uniphase was also upgraded by Deutsche Bank to Buy from Hold, citing valuation and expectations of improved profitability.
• Western Digital Corp. (NYSE:WDC) was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Raymond James following their strong earnings report.
• MGM Mirage (NYSE:MGM) was upgraded to Buy from Hold at KeyBank/McDonald based on valuation and fundamentals.

OTHER UPGRADES:

• Sina Corp (NASDAQ:SINA) was upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank. The firm cited Sina's strong results and a positive 2007 outlook for the upgrade. Citigroup also upgraded Sina Corp to Buy from Hold.
• DA Davidson upgraded Trident Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRID) to Buy from Neutral on valuation.
• Finally, JP Morgan upgraded Unilever N.V. (NYSE:UN) to Neutral from Underweight. The firm expects positive news flow and possible upside surprises over the next six to nine months driven by margin expansion and cost stabilization.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).