Fujitsu has announced it will stop production of hard disk drive heads by the end of March and book a one-time loss of 5 billion Yen (about $56 million) for the October-December quarter to close down the operations. The move is reportedly part of a "broader strategic review" of its overall hard drive business and will send some 360 employees working specifically on the drive heads at the Japanese company's Nagano plant towards other factories.
The Nagano plant itself will continue to run as it makes printed circuit boards for servers and telecoms equipment. Fujitsu has been trying to focus on its core growth areas in recent years, ending production of plasma televisions, downplaying the importance of solid state drives and now is apparently looking to phase out hard drives altogether. The Japanese giant has admittedly been in talks with Western Digital and, most recently, Toshiba to sell the loss-making business but says nothing has been decided yet.