Thursday, September 21st 2017
Toshiba Responds to SanDisk's Call for International Arbitration
Western Digital Corporation's subsidiary SanDisk LLC (SanDisk) and certain of its subsidiaries, through their attorneys, have notified Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502)(Toshiba) and Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba, that they have initiated arbitration regarding TMC's planned investments for additional BiCS capacity at TMC's Yokkaichi Operations, including at its Fab 6 building. Although Toshiba has not yet received a formal copy of the arbitration request, and is therefore not in a position to comment regarding its substance, Toshiba is disappointed by Western Digital's initiation of additional arbitration at this important time for the parties' collaboration.
As previously announced, production at Fab 6 will be entirely devoted to BiCS FLASH, Toshiba's premiere 3D Flash memory product. Phase-1 of the fab is scheduled for completion in summer 2018, and will be a unilateral investment by Toshiba following SanDisk's unwillingness to agree to reasonable commercial terms.
As previously announced, production at Fab 6 will be entirely devoted to BiCS FLASH, Toshiba's premiere 3D Flash memory product. Phase-1 of the fab is scheduled for completion in summer 2018, and will be a unilateral investment by Toshiba following SanDisk's unwillingness to agree to reasonable commercial terms.
10 Comments on Toshiba Responds to SanDisk's Call for International Arbitration
BiCS was a joint project of these two companies, so I'm pretty sure that there were provisions for limiting manufacturing volume and sharing the market fairly.
It may not mean anything to the end-user in the short run, but it will hurt WD badly, and I just started to like their SSDs.
But yeah, I was starting to like their SSDs too. And this won't win me over to Toshiba. Screw them. My Toshiba TV sucks anyway.
If Toshiba throws everything at 3D NAND production, they are showing the prospect of steady supply and lower prices to all kinds of OEMs, from phones and tablets, to desktops, laptops and whoever else uses solid state storage, and ensuring lower production cost for their own products. The more memory you make, the cheaper it is to manufacture. So, what WD is scared of is being unable to match Toshiba's price at lower volume and not making as many sales as they initially thought (or not making any money).
Now it won't be so instant. But this is this what they will do nonetheless.
The modern business model for some may be like that, but they're not leaders. They want to be like Samsung. Not Corsair...or Patriot.. or whoever.
You might be surprised to discover how many SSDs currently on the market are using Toshiba NAND.