IBM invests $20m in MR head plant

IBM is planning to increase production of its MR head hard disk drive technology with a purpose built plant in China. The company has announced plans to pump $20m into the development of a new plant while it has also announced an OEM deal with Maxtor.

IBM will supply MR heads to Maxtor who will incorporate the technology into its desktop PC drives. The market is starting to demand MR heads in greater quantity and research company TrendFOCUS believes the OEM MR head business is expected to be worth $5 billion by 2000.

IBM has now shipped 10 million heads with nine million being shipped in the last five months.