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Western Digital to buy Hitachi GST for $4.3 billion
The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of the year, pending regulatory approval, and should help Western Digital strengthen its leading position in the market after taking the crown from Seagate. In 2010, Western Digital represented 31.4% of the hard drive market, nearly two percentage points ahead of Seagate's share of 29.6%. Hitachi GST took third place in overall shipments with 16.4%, ahead of Toshiba/Fujitsu at 12.6% and Samsung at 9.2%.
Besides the acquisition plans Western Digital also recently reveled its interest in developing a hybrid drive combining spinning disk and solid-state storage, along the lines of Seagate's Momentus XT. The company noted that hybrid hard drives still need better support from operating systems to reach their full potential, and that such a drive could show up in gaming systems because of the better performance, as well as enterprise and mobile environments.
User Comments: 8
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Woah, I kind of figured Samsung or Toshiba would pick up Hitatchi.
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Staff
Over the course of 10 years, we have seen the number of manufactures drop significantly.
Quantum was gobbled up by Maxtor
Maxtor was gobbled up by Seagate
IBM's drive division was gobbled up by Hitatchi
Fujitsu was gobbled up by Toshiba
Excelstor is gone (not that they amounted to much anyhow)
Who's next?
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not a bad profit considering IBM sold it's disk business to Hitach in 2002 for $2.05 Billion.
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The $US 2.05bn was the initial investment for 70% of IBM's hard drive division. It does not represent the total acquisition price.
You might also consider that Hitachi got the hdd business at a knockdown price considering IBM's ongoing (at the time) sales, PR and legal trainwreck -the 75GXP, colloquially known as the IBM Deathstar.
Since Hitachi GST is already a player in the SSD market -something lacking in WD's portfolio I would think the $3.5bn outlay represented good business.
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Lokalaskurar said:
I never imagined Western Digital as a candidate for Hitachi, I always though of a more local affiar - like Toshiba, FDX or even Fujitsu acquiring Hitachi. Frankly, I personally thought Hitachi would stand on their own legs for quite some time more.
Rick said:Excelstor is gone (not that they amounted to much anyhow)
Yeah, what happened with those, anyway?
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good riddance desk star and travel star hard drives... you will NOT be missed.
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I can't decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's bad because they are essentially removing a competitor from the market, giving the consumer less choices. But what are you gonna do?
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I used IBM HDDs before switching to Western Digital because of the former's limited availability in my country. I've had zero problems with either brand. I'm currently using WD Caviar Black and I'm happy that WD bought Hitachi's HDD business. Now, I know I'll be buying my hard disks from only one company.
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