Tuesday, December 20th 2011
Seagate Finalizes the Acquisition of Samsung's Hard Drive Business
Seagate Technology has today announced that it completed the acquisition of Samsung Electronics' hard drive unit. Worth $1.4 billion, this deal covers the assets, infrastructure and employees of Samsung's HDD business and is supposed to boost Seagate's production capacity, R&D strength and customer access in China, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Germany and the Russian Federation.
As part of the agreement, Seagate will be supplying HDDs for Samsung PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics devices, while the South Korean giant will provide Seagate with semiconductor products needed for enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), solid-state hybrid drives and other products. Moreover, the two companies have signed an extended patent cross-license agreement, and have agreed to collaborate on the development of enterprise storage solutions.
"Together, Seagate and Samsung have aligned our current and future product development efforts and roadmaps in order to accelerate time-to-market efficiency for new products and position us to better address the increasing demands for storage," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. "It is an exciting time in the industry with rapidly evolving opportunities in many markets including mobile computing, cloud computing, and solid state storage."
To ensure a smooth transition, Seagate is going to continue selling certain HDDs under the Samsung brand name for 12 months. Seagate didn't say anything but it's probable the Samsung-branded drives will include a warranty period comparable to that of the latest Barracudas.
As part of the agreement, Seagate will be supplying HDDs for Samsung PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics devices, while the South Korean giant will provide Seagate with semiconductor products needed for enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), solid-state hybrid drives and other products. Moreover, the two companies have signed an extended patent cross-license agreement, and have agreed to collaborate on the development of enterprise storage solutions.
"Together, Seagate and Samsung have aligned our current and future product development efforts and roadmaps in order to accelerate time-to-market efficiency for new products and position us to better address the increasing demands for storage," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. "It is an exciting time in the industry with rapidly evolving opportunities in many markets including mobile computing, cloud computing, and solid state storage."
To ensure a smooth transition, Seagate is going to continue selling certain HDDs under the Samsung brand name for 12 months. Seagate didn't say anything but it's probable the Samsung-branded drives will include a warranty period comparable to that of the latest Barracudas.
27 Comments on Seagate Finalizes the Acquisition of Samsung's Hard Drive Business
I agree with you about the price fixing, there is no competition left. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole warranty thing is because of lack of competition :shadedshu.
I had a Samsung 8GB drive from 1999 that was incredibly reliable - even more so given the number of times I'd dropped it and knocked it while it was running. Never had a single error from it. Awesome drive. It was the SV844A.
After 7200.7 all Seagate disk are cr*p my 2x1TB disks get 9% health on SMART with around 1600 bad sectors. I also have few Samsung disks 1TB and 2TB and all i can say is amazing silent, reliable and very fast and that is not all, the price is lowest among the competition!
My samsung drive has worked flawlessly. Bought a seagate external maybe a year back, died after 3 weeks, got angry, went to the seagate forums, lots of people with the same problem and no support... :mad: returned the drive and got me a Lacie neil poulton external after that. The Lacie drive has had a few "clicks of death", but does anyone know if Lacie manufactures their own drives or is it samsung/seagate/WD inside the external box ??
I see it now the Seasam Spincuda.
Out of Seagate and WD I'd rather pickup a Seagate drive. Now that they have Samsung's HDD IP I hope they actually use it.
HD's would be less than 0.1% of my future pc hardware purchases and can not remember when last I have seen a samsung hd anywhere.