Seagate Takes Over Samsung's HDD for $1.375bn
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.
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This is unfortunate- Seagate will pull Samsung's quality down to their levels.
isn't Samsung the world's largest maker of memory chips? lol i wonder what interesting technology Seagate brought under its belt after buying out Samsung's HDD division.
First they take Maxtor from me, now Samsung. This is a bad day.
"Half of the $1.375 million price is to be paid in cash"
Isn't it supposed to be billion?
As for the news, maybe HDD prices will decrease more as the competition increases between these two HDD giants.
Didn't WD take over Hitachi a while back?
HDDs aren't on the way out but it won't happen anytime soon.
Hopefully this won't mean the pricing trends turn around and performance improvements end.
"Half of the $1.375 million price is to be paid in cash"Isn't it supposed to be billion?As for the news, maybe HDD prices will decrease more as the competition increases between these two HDD giants.
You're right, thanks!
First they take Maxtor from me, now Samsung. This is a bad day.
I agree. I had amazing luck with Maxtor and Samsung drives. I only had 1 Maxtor drive ever die on me and they RMA'ed with with a 30% larger drive. Seriously, I'm running out of HDD manufacturers to buy from. I hate WD (had at least 4 die) and loathe Seagate (every one my family or I has owned died).
First they take Maxtor from me, now Samsung. This is a bad day.
Hey, the removal of Maxtor was a day to celebrate. I never had a Maxtor HD that lasted more than a couple months before failing catastrophically.
Aw, no Samsung's HDD's were the best.
I agree. I had amazing luck with Maxtor and Samsung drives. I only had 1 Maxtor drive ever die on me and they RMA'ed with with a 30% larger drive. Seriously, I'm running out of HDD manufacturers to buy from. I hate WD (had at least 4 die) and loathe Seagate (every one my family or I has owned died).
Lol, we've had polar opposite experiences, apparently. Every Maxtor drive I've had always sucked, and every WD drive I've had has been wonderful. The few times a WD drive has failed on me, they've always sent me back a new one that was the next size up.
Oh well, maybe the market is starting to balance out, and there are no longer "good vendors" and "bad vendors", and all are generally equal now.
That sucks. I have a couple spinpoints (F3 and F4s) an they work well. But it now looks like WD is the only hard drive manufacturer I'll be buying from because Seagates lack of quality will trickle down more than likely.
People will always have different experiences with different brands. However, a reduction in the competition doesn't ever usually bode well for the consumer in the long run. I say usually, because it's not always true, but right now Seagate's focused on hybrid HDD's: Mostly magnetic with part SSD to help increase speeds.
When was the last time Seagate was actually innovative???
"Half of the $1.375 million price is to be paid in cash"Isn't it supposed to be billion?As for the news, maybe HDD prices will decrease more as the competition increases between these two HDD giants.
But Maxtor drives were terrible. . .
Great this is the worst news this month thus far. Seagate is bloody excrement as far as drives go and WD is sliding quality wise. So that is minus Samsung and Hitachi all in a few months time.
I've had a maxtor drive that lasted 10+ years. Just took it out of circulation this year. I have 2 even older maxtors powering HTPCs that are still going strong. Maybe those of you with bad experiences should consider shipping with fedex next time.
I dont like this one bit...but what are we to do about it?
I just hope that prices on hard drives dont go up. The only thing I want to go up is Seagates drive reliability, because for me, its been really iffy. I know everyone has a different experience, but thats mine. Funny enough, I noticed people complaining about Maxtor, because I have some pre-Seagate buy out drives that are running like a champ in one of my older PC builds. YMMV I guess.
Oh, and about Fed EX shipping, I have received a couple bad drives that way too. I think its more about how the company you buy from decided to pack the little bastards. It takes more then a little layer of bubble wrap to keep a drive safe during shipping...
I hope they don't wreck the Samsung F3's quality. That or just the Fx series in general. They are beasts.
This is unfortunate- Seagate will pull Samsung's quality down to their levels.
Speak for yourself. My Barracuda 7200.9 is still going after a whole lifetime of punishment, since they day it was put in my old Dell Dimension e510. It's been dropped so many times now that it's a regular occurrence, but it's built like a tank and hasn't had a single problem in the entire time I've owned it. I see nothing wrong with their drives.
This is bad news, yes. But still, I've always used Seagate drives and never had problems...
I've had a maxtor drive that lasted 10+ years. Just took it out of circulation this year. I have 2 even older maxtors powering HTPCs that are still going strong. Maybe those of you with bad experiences should consider shipping with fedex next time.
Those older drives are much higher quality than current drives and of much simpler design. I have personally seen a 15gb quantum drive that has lasted 42k hours of use and still pass smart with no problems. I have a few drives that are almost as old as I am and they still run but have had my fair share of modern drives go bad. Modern drives are like a game of Russian Roulette, you never know when you are going to get screwed.
I look forward to see if this will bring about the next evolution in the hybrid drive
I'd agree - sad to see Samsung HDD's go. They have been my HD manufacture of choice ever since WD let me down a few years ago (and even worse results with Seagate drives).
seagate can stick their faulty shit where the sun don't shine
NOO!!! I was waiting for Samsungs 1TB per platter Hdds... :'C
I never liked either Seagate or Samsung hard drives as they both failed on me unreasonably. However, I'm worried about the lack of competitors that may result from this.
When was the last time Seagate was actually innovative???
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734 [...] hybrid-hdd
When was the last time Seagate was actually innovative???
With the Momentus XT? Its a hard drive ssd hybrid. Its been out about a year now, but that pretty innovative if you ask me.
This is unfortunate- Seagate will pull Samsung's quality down to their levels.
sad but very true....also, Hitachi's HDDs are much better if you ask me
My experience with Samsung HDD - Made in Korea is so far so good, but Made in China is bad. drive fails after 1-2 years. hopefully they will still produce made in korea samsung HDDs.
I switched to Seagate after a few successive failures with WD drives. I never used Samsung drives too often. Maybe this acquisition will be a good thing.