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Is OCZ going down for the count?

Meghan54

Meghan54

Lifer
OCZ, late with filing its required quarterly 10-K report with the SEC, released an 8-K statement today, and inside was some disturbing news, quoted below.


As part of the Company’s transformation, it has taken initial steps to make its business more efficient and profitable by initiating the EOL procedures to discontinue approximately 150 product variations, including reducing the value category by approximately 80 percent. This streamlines OCZ’s product offerings to address the mainstream and higher-end consumer products, as well as enterprise and OEM solutions. The Company has also evaluated its inventory and is in the process of making the necessary adjustments, including monetizing some inventory to better align its product offerings and to free-up cash for
the business. Excluding production personnel, the Company has reduced its global workforce by approximately 28 percent. Total personnel at the Taiwan production facility, including outside contractors, has been reduced by approximately 32 percent. This facility continues to increase
overall efficiency and production levels. The Company will continue to take further actions aimed at reducing overall costs and improving operating results.
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Now, I'm no financial expert, but dumping 150 products, esp. about 80% of its value oriented lines, selling off a bunch of inventory quickly for a much needed quick injection of cash, reducing overall workforce by 28%, doesn't make things sound good for OCZ's long term health. And OCZ has yet to file its late quarterly report.

But the silver lining may be fire sale prices shortly for a bunch of OCZ product. The black cloud is, of course, will OCZ even last the next six months----and will anyone buying fire sale priced goods from OCZ have any warranty recourse if this fails to save the company.

Worrying times at OCZ.
 
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Friends don't let friends buy OCZ. On the plus side, might be able to grab an SSD cheap for my old laptop.
 
Corporate Thug said:
unfortunately, the field is too competitive to be plagued with a reputation of poor quality control, whether it be justified or not.
Click to expand...


True, but a lot of OCZ's problems seem to be self-inflicted.

Take OCZ's power supplies.....while most were at least decent, I've never seen another brand with as many refurb's for sale as OCZ has. Microcenter is awash in OCZ refurb power supplies.....StealthXStreams, EvoStream, GameXStreams. My local MC has 24 OCZ power supplies, 10 of which are refurbs, or just over 41% of what that MC carries. No other power supply brand has as many.

And that situation was mirrored with their now defunct memory line, OCZ's core business that has been completely abandoned. From purely owner postings, OCZ had lots of problems with their memory and failures until OCZ just abandoned the whole segment.

I guess mismanagement is partly to blame. But part can be attributed to what is perceived as OCZ's race to the bottom---to be the low cost seller despite trying to position itself as a premier brand. Didn't work out well in the end. You cannot have it both ways.
 
On NCIX they still dominate the list of top 10 best selling SSDs. AFAIK their quality control problems were mainly because of the Sandforce controller which a lot of other companies were using, though OCZ was selling the most and therefore probably took the biggest hit to their rep.
 
Bad move. They don't have a good enough reputation to make it in the high end market. High end shoppers want quality and have the money to pay for it.
 
Meghan54 said:
True, but a lot of OCZ's problems seem to be self-inflicted.

Take OCZ's power supplies.....while most were at least decent, I've never seen another brand with as many refurb's for sale as OCZ has. Microcenter is awash in OCZ refurb power supplies.....StealthXStreams, EvoStream, GameXStreams. My local MC has 24 OCZ power supplies, 10 of which are refurbs, or just over 41% of what that MC carries. No other power supply brand has as many.

And that situation was mirrored with their now defunct memory line, OCZ's core business that has been completely abandoned. From purely owner postings, OCZ had lots of problems with their memory and failures until OCZ just abandoned the whole segment.

I guess mismanagement is partly to blame. But part can be attributed to what is perceived as OCZ's race to the bottom---to be the low cost seller despite trying to position itself as a premier brand. Didn't work out well in the end. You cannot have it both ways.
Click to expand...

They have/had management issues from top to bottom. IIRC, the CEO and CFO were the two bozos who were opposing a (Seagate?) merger before their stock tumbled from $6-$7 to next to nothing.
 
Sad to hear.

Meghan54 said:
True, but a lot of OCZ's problems seem to be self-inflicted.

Take OCZ's power supplies.....while most were at least decent, I've never seen another brand with as many refurb's for sale as OCZ has. Microcenter is awash in OCZ refurb power supplies.....StealthXStreams, EvoStream, GameXStreams. My local MC has 24 OCZ power supplies, 10 of which are refurbs, or just over 41% of what that MC carries. No other power supply brand has as many.

And that situation was mirrored with their now defunct memory line, OCZ's core business that has been completely abandoned. From purely owner postings, OCZ had lots of problems with their memory and failures until OCZ just abandoned the whole segment.

I guess mismanagement is partly to blame. But part can be attributed to what is perceived as OCZ's race to the bottom---to be the low cost seller despite trying to position itself as a premier brand. Didn't work out well in the end. You cannot have it both ways.
Click to expand...

Mildly surprised to hear this, but at same time not so much.
IIRC they bought out PC Power & Cooling which had great reputation at the time. But in acquiring that company, they probably axed some of the workforce that made their shit excellent.
So I got one of their PSU's. Lasted 6? years. Had to replace it a couple months ago, sadly.
 
I was annoyed when they bought out PC Power & Cooling.

I had resigned not to purchase any of their products but when my WD Raptor finally died I picked up two SSDs on sale, $120 shipped for both. Six months later they are doing alright.

I still don't like them as a company, as irrational as that sounds. I have to admit I find my own human nature and bias against them... interesting, if not slightly embarrassing.
 
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OlafSicky said:
So what do you guys think did them in the fake rebates or the poor qc?
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poor QC. OCZ was all marketing no substance, it'll only take so long for even the uneducated masses to catch on.

Their memory was always crap, everything else was mediocre at best, they messed up PCP&C and they had SO MUCH trouble with their SSDs. I still remember when they swapped out the NAND on their best selling drive without telling anyone which caused performance to drop substantially and then when called out on it they tried to deny it all.

they only really had the budget and mainstream segment, the higher end and corporate where all the big fat margins are at paid them no heed, and you can only carry on for so long before even your cheapest drive just isn't worth the cost.
 
Dang, I've never really had many problems with them:

2 sticks of RAM c. 2005, soon after discovering one of them was bad (Actually, I created my account, here, in 2006 to track down the problem and that was the diagnosis), an OCZ rep contacted me here and shipped out a replacement post-haste, never a problem after that.

This was in their touted high-end brand at the time.

A Modstream 420W power supply in that same box. Worked like a tank for at least 6 years.

Then 4gb of their Black Edition DDR3 for my current box (though I eventually replaced that with some 16GB Gskill stuff when it was so cheap). Never had a problem with that.

...I did avoid their SSD's though. :\
 
I never had their ram, but from what I know of others, it seemed to be flaky, and could be made to run, but took more effort that usual in bios, setting voltage and timing. They also seemed to have better than average cs, and you could get someone to help you get the ram setup. Of course, it shouldn't take special effort to setup ram...
 
I bought an OCZ SSD as my first SSD, before I found out they were questionable. So far so good though *touch wood*. I had TONS of issues with my PC but they've all been solved since I switched video cards. (oddly, ATI, which is known for having issues with drivers).
 
Can't really say i'm sorry to see them go. Perhaps their shit finally caught up to them.
 
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