Samsung HDD division sold to Seagate for $1.375 billion

[Sam]

anyone seen it coming? first of all it was Hitachi & it was expected as they were loosing market share thanks to Seagate & WDC dominance. but why Samsung. simply cause SSD brings in too much profit that HDD section can be ignored.

more here: Source 1 & Source 2.

[Krow]

Well... Two horse race?

[Sam]

till SSD don't make them part of history books.

[Krow]

^Still some time for that to happen. Don't SSD's have limited life? As in limited number of writes?

[Sam]

yes. it have limited writes & so is used as boot drives only. & they are still out of reach for most.

[azzu]

didnt see that coming...
was it really necessary for d Samsung ?

[Sam]

i think you should read this small article: Intel facing challenge from Samsung.

i'll highlight 1 line from the article thats relevant to the buyout of Sammy's HDD section.

Samsung in 2010 made significant strides towards eroding Intel's lead in the semiconductor industry. It is the first time in ten years that Chipzilla has noticed a rival and it is largely thanks to booming sales of its memory integrated circuits.

now, why would you still invest in old age tech that bring in limited profit when you can go head on (& even beat) World's No.1 semiconductor company. to remind you, a ram company which i can't quite recall stopped selling ram to focus on SSD. this shows SSD = tons of money.

& i have a feeling, AMD might be Samsung's next target (rumors are already up & suggest Samsung plans to buy AMD).

[Faun]

I hope this rumor remains rumor. Intel's profit in this quarter are surprising.

[Sam]

if Samsung ultimately decides to get AMD, they'll have to write a cheque of around 12B$. this may affect their own productivity. and if Bulldozer is a success, upp that value to 15-16B$.

but on the brighter side, look at Samsung's electronic section. dual core Exynos @ 2Ghz due next year. but its better if desktop processor race is left untouched. anyway windows8 will run on ARM chip. so they want or not, Samsung & Qualcomm are potential threat to Intel (& AMD).