Seagate has earlier announced that it would launch its first Solid State Drives soon, and that it had would keep pumping out SSDs over the coming years. Right now you need some close ties to the NAND flash makers, or even be one, to be able to compete on the SSD market. Intel even decided to team up with memory chip maker Micron to make sure that its flash division remain cutting edge
Seagate doesn’t have these close ties, or a production of its own, which is why analysts have started to speculate on where it will get the chips from, perhaps from buying Intel’s share of the joint Intel Micron venture. The only problem with such an affair is that both Intel and Micron are happy with the joint venture and a buy-out would cost Seagate something in the order of $1 billion and more.
Another possibility would be to acquire SanDisk, which focuses on making entry-level solid state drives, but is a major player on the overall NAND flash market. If it will be SanDisk, Hynix or any other flash maker remains to be seen, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Seagate announces the acquisition of a flash company soon.
