Samsung has put an end to yesterday’s speculation by announcing a strategic partnership with Seagate. Under the agreement, Seagate will take over Samsung’s HDD business and will also extend the partnership with Samsung over other areas like:
– Extending the cross-license agreement between the companies
– Co-develop Enterprise Storage Solutions
– Disk Drive supply agreement to supply hard drives for Samsung hardware
– NAND flash memory supply agreement for use in Seagate’s SSD products
The overall value of this agreement is approx. US$1.375 billion where Samsung will be paid 50% with stock and remaining by cash. Samsung will also gain a stake in Seagate of about 9.6% and a place on Seagate’s Board of Directors.
Very very bad! This whole consolidation of the storage area is bad for competition and in the end for consumers. Seagate were once good but now they are considered the least reliable HDD makers. With WD swooping up Hitachi and now crappy Seagate taking over Samsung’s HDD business, I really hope the market doesn’t get flooded with failing crap from both WD and Seagate and I hope Samsung teaches Seagate a thing or two about making decent disk drives!
Better get a few more reliable SpinPoints before they are only a dim memory 🙁