The WD and Hitachi merger is almost complete. But the FTC has tied some pretty big strings to give it's consent. Out of concern of a WD and Seagate duopoly, they've ordered that WD give Toshiba production assets equal to those of Hitachi and give Toshiba access to all it's research and licenses.

Seems like a big windfall for Toshiba. What about poor Samsung though?

http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/06/ftc-orders-western-digital-share-assets-with-toshiba/

Seems a harsh decision to me. What WD gains as production assets they have to give to another company and on top of that give them access to its research? Ouch!
Why wold they have to give up their research to a competitor though? It will make Toshiba more competitive, but kind of unfair for WD.

And yes, what about Samsung?

 

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If I'm not mistaken, Samsung's hard drive division was purchased by Seagate last year.

Then what about Seagate?

 

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Yeah, forgot Samsung also got swallowed up recently. Geez, WD and Seagate have pretty much sucked up everyone. Shame, I loved Samsung, but I don't like Seagate.

Sheesh, remember when there was Maxtor, WD, Samsung, Hitatchi, IBM (DeathStar lol) and others? Sheesh... Duopoly scares me...

 

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Monopoly should scare you more, that is why the asset transfer is happening. Duopoly is what we effectively have for PC CPU's with Intel and AMD having the only ones to realistically consider for a non portable computer.

 

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