Today it was announced that Seagate has purchased Samsung’s HDD business. If Western Digital’s bid to purchase Hitachi’s HDD business goes through (and I would think that allowing Seagate to do the same should grease the wheels a tad), that would bring the entire HDD business down to these three:
- Seagate
- Western Digital
- Toshiba
You can guess which one is the minority partner in this relationship.
Couple this with the news that Seagate and Western Digital are cutting the warranties on consumer-grade drives and you get the picture that the “spinning rust” business isn’t as rosy as it used to be, even outside of the drive shortages that have propped up prices for the foreseeable future. It is hard being in a commodity business, especially one that is as driven by price as traditional storage.