Fujitsu and Toshiba reach agreement on hard drive business deal
By Donald Melanson 
posted February 17th 2009 2:54PM
posted February 17th 2009 2:54PM
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.
First
Get a life.
let's all play "fill the douchebag's mail box".
What an idiot.
Well, with Seagate becoming Maxtor, I can see a Toshiba/Fujitsu work well. Plus, I think they'd dominate the Japanese market considering the dominance in mentioned country.
I wonder if toshiba has heard about SSD's.
But perhaps they'll add an upscaling chip to their HD's to make them almost seem to be SSD?
It will take a long time for SSD to come of age. It is still far too pricey for the average user.... per gb that is.
Wouldthis make the brand name Fu-To?
TO FU man, TOFU!!!!
"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."
That's if were still using HDD's in 2015.
It's kind of like opening a new CRT factory in 1999 only to have LCD's take over the market a few years later.
I wonder what the interim company will be called?
Hard-Drives-R-Us?