Hitachi, Toshiba, and Fujitsu joining hands for hard drive spinoff?
According to excited rumblings emanating from "undisclosed sources," drive-maker Hitachi is in talks with Fujitsu and Toshiba over the formation of new joint-company dedicated to hard drives and other storage systems. Apparently, Hitachi has had early discussions with the equity firm Silver Lake over spinning off its recently-troubled hard drive unit, though apparently the conversations haven't exactly been fruitful. Silver Lake has long-standing ties to Seagate, and observers (again, unnamed) have alleged that the company doesn't understand a traditional Japanese business. If the deal is going down, "sources" and "observers" say it's likely to happen no later than April 1st, though we officially cock one eyebrow, prop our elbows onto the dinner table, and declare, "Oh really?"
