Western Digital gains foothold in cloud with $19 billion SanDisk acquisition

Grazed from FirstPost. Author: Editorial Staff.

Hard-disk drive maker Western Digital is buying SanDisk for about $19 billion. The deal is expected to increase Western Digital’s ability to make flash memory storage chips used in smartphones and tablets. Western Digital needs access to SanDisk’s NAND technology to better compete in the market for solid-state drives used in cloud computing, data centres, smartphones and laptops. With this, Western Digital said it will double its addressable market and expand its participation in higher-growth segments.

"The combined company will be ideally positioned to capture the growth opportunities created by the rapidly evolving storage industry," said Steve Milligan, chief executive officer, Western Digital. Both companies have strong R&D and engineering capabilities and over 15,000 combined patents issued or pending worldwide…

Toshiba has been a long-term strategic partner to SanDisk for 15 years. The joint venture (JV) with Toshiba will be ongoing. The JV provides stable NAND supply at scale through a time-tested business model and extends across NVM technologies such as 3D NAND…

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