Seagate and Samsung Announce Strategic Alignment

[Rob Williams]

After Western Digital acquired Hitachi's storage division last month, many were speculating that Seagate would begin shopping around for its own company to acquire, and it has. Today, both Seagate and Samsung have announced a partnership that sees the former opening up its wallet, but both reaping strategic rewards.

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

 

[Optix]

Wow, you'd have to heave your head in the sand not to see this coming. It should help them keep up with the Jones'.

 

[Greg King]

Sounds like a win-win to me.

 

[Optix]

Some early sources reported this as a full on buy out by Seagate. Nice to see it isn't since that would pretty much mean we're down to a 2 company hard drive market.

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

boo seagate!! *throws popcorn*

 

[Optix]

I miss Maxtor. A little while before I started to lurk on Techgage I sold a 40GB Maxtor Fireball, which was still in perfect working order.

 

[Greg King]

I miss Maxtor. A little while before I started to lurk on Techgage I sold a 40GB Maxtor Fireball, which was still in perfect working order.

I miss the day of celebration when I heard that they were purchased by a company that didn't suck. I got burned twice by Maxtor so as far as I'm concerned burn down their offices and throw salt all over the ground, ruining it for future generations.

 

[Optix]

Tell us how you really feel.

 

[Kougar]

This is crazy. Just crazy.

Seagate bought out Maxtor
Toshiba bought out Fujitsu's HDD division
Western Digital bought out Hitachi's HDD division
Seagate bought out Samsung's HDD division

That leaves only Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba as HDD manufacturers.

This deal leaves both Western Digital and Seagate with quite a bit of SSD technology in their respective portfolios, although Samsung has a wide range of SSD technology they will now be leasing to Seagate. It will be very interesting to see where Western Digital and Seagate both decide to go with their latest acquisitions in SSD technology given the SSD market itself is already pretty full with some very powerful drives.

 

[Greg King]

Tell us how you really feel.

.

 

[Doomsday]

CPUs: Intel vs AMD
GPUs: ATI/AMD vs Nvidia
HDDs: WD vs Seagate?!?

 

[Kougar]

CPUs: Intel vs AMD
GPUs: ATI/AMD vs Nvidia
HDDs: WD vs Seagate?!?

I have no issue buying whichever brand of GPU or CPU best meets the price and/or performance criteria... but I can't say the same for hard drives. Especially when the only options left are Western Digital or Seagate.

I'm pretty sure most enthusiasts feel the same way, although the same certainly can't be said about the actual brand they'd go with.