Massengill to Head Western Digital Unit
Western Digital Corp. said Friday that it has named Matt Massengill to run a young division that sells high-capacity hard disk drives to makers of servers and other area-wide systems.
The company promoted Massengill to senior vice president and general manager of its Enterprise Storage Group unit, effective immediately. He had been vice president for marketing at the company’s personal storage unit, which funded the start-up of the Enterprise operation in January 1995.
For the record:
12:00 a.m. July 3, 1997 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday July 3, 1997 Orange County Edition Business Part D Page 6 Financial Desk 2 inches; 41 words Type of Material: Correction
Western Digital--A story Saturday misstated two sales figures for Western Digital Corp. The disk drive maker sold 5.9 million drives for personal computers in the first quarter and it expects to be selling its new, high-capacity drives at an annual rate of $1 billion by the end of June 1998.
Massengill will move from Orange County to Rochester, Minn., where the Enterprise group is based.
The new unit began shipping its drives in December and sold more than 100,000 in the first three months this year, its first full quarter of sales. The drives are priced at about $500, or about double the price for desktop computer drives.
Western Digital sells about 5.9 million personal computer drives a year, and they make up the bulk of its product line, spokesman Robert Blair said. But, like others in the industry, the company wants to sell more higher-end dries because profit margins are greater.
Western Digital expects to be selling at an annual rate of $1 million worth of high-capacity drives by the end of June 1998, Blair said.
