According to a source to Wall Street Journal it looks like Samsung is the next company to fold on the harddrive market. The reason is the company is bleeding money and the mother company is eager to cut off the weak limb as soon as possible, and the is a potential buyer.
Reliable sources implies that Samsung is looking to terminate the manufacturing of harddrives as soon as possible since Q4 was really red quarter and Q1 will most likely be just as red.
Samsung has 11% of the global market and according to the source Samsung was considering to sell off the manufacturing for 1.5 billion dollar, but would settle for just under 1 billion just to get rid of it. The name that comes up as a potential buyer is Seagate.
The reason Samsung wants so desperately to drop its harddrive company is the growth among smartphones and tables and these use NAND circuits, just like SSDs, for storage since it is more energy efficient, need less space and is actually cheaper to integrated into these units than a 1.8″ harddrive.
Instead Samsung will make run for the SSD market and the sales of NAND circuits since the mobile market is continuing to grow and there are no signs of a slowing development, on the contrary we have an even more mobile society coming. The companies that will be left on the market will then be Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba, and if so Seagate will get 39.9%, Western Digital 49.4% and Toshiba 10.8%.
Source: Fox Business via WSJ
