Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) has announced the acquisition of the Samsung hard drive business is complete. Under the deal Seagate purchased facilities, assets and brought over employees that will help Seagate continue to innovate and add production scale to their existing hard drive operations with an emphasis on the development of small form factor solutions.
Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) has announced the acquisition of the Samsung hard drive business is complete. Under the deal Seagate purchased facilities, assets and brought over employees that will help Seagate continue to innovate and add production scale to their existing hard drive operations with an emphasis on the development of small form factor solutions.
Seagate announced the deal back in April, which also includes a provision that lets Seagate be the source of hard drives for Samsung’s line of notebook computers. Seagate will in turn buy key semiconductor pieces from Samsung for use in their enterprise SSDs and other products like their hybrid hard drive lineup. The companies also extended certain intellectual property agreements and plan to work together to develop enterprise storage solutions.
From the consumer perspective, not much changes right away at least. Seagate will continue to use the Samsung brand on most hard drives for at least a year while the integration takes place. After that it remains to be seen how Seagate will perpetuate the Samsung brand in the hard drive space, if at all.
The closing of the deal is huge for Seagate who for now has a tremendous market leadership position in terms of the number of drives shipped. Seagate also has key advantages over Western Digital in areas like hard drive capacity and their hybrid hard drive solutions. Of course Western Digital has indicated their own acquisition of Hitachi will close this calendar year, which will help close the gap, but WD has been more adversely affected by the flooding, giving Seagate a big window over the next six months to reshape the landscape.
