Seagate Takes Over Samsung's HDD for $1.375bn

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Samsung and Seagate this morning announced a “broad strategic alignment” that will see Seagate take over Samsung’s hard drive disk division.

It was just last month that Western Digital acquired Hitachi’s HDD unit for $4.3 billion, and now it looks as though Samsung and Seagate are teaming up to take on the newly strengthened WD. First rumored yesterday, Seagate’s $1.375 billion purchase of Samsung’s HDD division was confirmed early today. Half of the $1.375 billion price is to be paid in cash, while the remaining 50 percent will be paid in stocks.

Aside from combining the two companies hard disk drive divisions, the deal will also further extend the existing patent cross-license agreement between the two. Other elements of the deal include a NAND flash memory supply agreement that will see Samsung provide Seagate with semiconductor products for use in SSDs and hybrid SSDs; a disk drive supply agreement under which Seagate will supply disk drives to Samsung for PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics; a partnership between the two to co-develop enterprise storage solutions; and a shareholder agreement that will see a Samsung executive join the Seagate Board of Directors.

“We are pleased to strengthen our strategic relationship with Samsung in a way that better aligns both companies around technologies and products,” said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. “With these agreements, we expect to achieve greater scale and deliver a broader range of innovative storage products and solutions to our customers, while facilitating our long-term relationship with Samsung.”

“Delivering value to the market and consumers is the primary goal of the extensive agreement announced today. Samsung looks forward to extending our existing strategic ties with Seagate, to deliver creative technology solutions for a broad diversity of consumer, business and industrial applications,” said Oh-hyun, Kwon, president of the semiconductor business of Samsung Electronics.

Of course, the whole thing is subject to the usual red tape and regulatory approvals, so it won’t be signed and sealed for months. Seagate says it expects the deal to be closed by the end of the 2011 calendar year.





By Jane McEntegart
Seagate Takes Over Samsung's HDD for $1.375bn
 
I hope Seagate improve their drives to match Samsung quality, and not vice versa.
 
I find seagate HDD's to be good quality and extremely quiet. My last samsung spinpoint didnt even last a year! lmao

I suppose it's all down to personal experience. I've been using Samsungs for years, and always found them to be the quietest and most reliable drives out there.

I've had at least a couple of Seagates fail on me.

You pays your money...etc.
 
I suppose it's all down to personal experience. I've been using Samsungs for years, and always found them to be the quietest and most reliable drives out there.

I've had at least a couple of Seagates fail on me.

You pays your money...etc.

As I said, had a spinpoint didnt last 9 months. lol.
 
You would think on company history Seagate should be better drives they are a specific storage media specialist company been in hard drive manufactuire for years..

Samsung are the "we make everything" company..phones, fridges, microwaves, TV's, STB's etc etc.. Relatively new to the hard disc arena in comparison to seagate.

The last 5 hard drives i've bought have all been Samsumg spinpoints mixture of 2.5inch SATA drives for STB;s and 3.5inch NAS drives though the price / perfoermance ratio is very good not sure about long term reliability though.. Seagate took over Maxtor in the past as well....
 
Seagate used to be premium consumer drive vendor offerings 5 years warranty when everyone else was offering 3 and now they only offer 5 years as well. Like many other people here, I mostly use samsung drives these days.

interesting purchase, when they bought maxtor that was easy to understand. Maxtor was always budget drive while seagate would keep positioning themselves as premium brand. However the samsung purchase to me makes less sense. Samsung do not have a huge presense in the enterprise market. Somewhere where seagate also trail behind WD, Hitachi (ex-IBM) and Fujitsu. So a purchase of Hitachi would have made sense.

Be interesting to see if they keep samsung brand alive and how they position it.
 
Hitachi...nahh..too much bad reputation to inherit. Didnt Hitachi come into the hard drive arena, after buying out the IBM Deskstar range of drives...after IBM had lawsuits and major issues with the drives failing prematurely 50% failure rates or something...due to heads hitting the glass platters. The drives became nicknamed the "Deathstar" instead of Deskstar.
Hitachi then bought the all right to the IBM Deskstar tehcnology and hard drive range....
I think Samsung were probably eating into Seagate market shares by undercutting seagate prices and gaining popularity with OEM manufacurers, system builders. So made sense to buy them out...
 
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