Fujitsu and Toshiba reach agreement on hard drive business deal
It's not exactly a huge surprise at this point, but Fujitsu and Toshiba have announced today that they've signed a memorandum of understanding on the transfer of Fujitsu's hard drive business to Toshiba, and that they plan to conclude a transfer contract "at an early date." To make the transition as smooth as possible, Fujitsu says it'll spinning off all its HDD-related business into a separate company in the interim, which Toshiba will buy an 80 percent stake in and make a Toshiba Group subsidiary. Then, once things are fully transitioned, Toshiba will buy up the remaining 20 percent and make the company a wholly owned subsidiary. Notably absent from today's announcement, however, is any word of a dollar figure, though previous reports had pegged the deal at anywhere from $335 to $447 million. Toshiba also doesn't seem like it'll be resting on its laurels once the deal is complete, saying that it hopes to increase its overall HDD market share 20 percent by the year 2015.
