Fujitsu Selling out to Western Digital?

Is the IT industry following suit along with the economy? The Wall-Street blues, Corporate entities closing up shop and the big banks buying out other big and small banks — could this be happening in the IT world too? In short, yes – however we are not saying this potential buy out fits the exact scenario. It could though.

Nikkei, a Japanese paper first broke the news by saying that Fujitsu is planning a sale to Western Digital and aims to reach an accord by the end of this year. This potential transaction could have us seeing Western Digital digging in their pockets for US$660 million to US$950 million. That potential buy out price tag is reportedly two to three times the yearly revenue of Fujitsu’s hard drive unit.

Fujitsu does not get as much press as the other big league players such as Seagate and Western Digital, but Fujitsu does produce a very large share of notebook storage solutions. This speaking purely within the storage market.

Fujitsu had made a comment that it was “reviewing its loss-making hard-disk drive business.” While a company spokesman added to that with “We are exploring various possibilities for our HDD business.” The spokesman then claimed that Fujitsu hasn’t made any concrete decisions as of current.

So could the IT Storage market be heading towards the same types of consolidations we are seeing in generalized economy right now? It sure is possible at this point in time as everything else that is going on can and will affect business on a broader scale.