Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion • Hacker News Board

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#11

Post by andrewfelix » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 8:10 AM UTC

In the short term this is good for Seagate. In the long term though, I think this is good for Samsung. More and more of our memory needs are being met by online storage.

Sure we'll need NAND going into the future. But are we going to need it in the quantities that we currently demand when cloud storage is becoming more and more popular?

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#12

Post by microtonal » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 8:10 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #2

And then there were 4[1]. And soon to be 3[2]. And one of those doesn't make many drives[3]. So we have a duopoly in hard disks. I'm quite surprised regulators allowed this deal. [1] Seagate, WD, Hitachi, Toshiba [2] WD is buying Hitachi [3] Toshiba doesn't make many drives, and only makes 2.5 inch and smaller.

Fortunately, there is more competition in the SSD space. And given that SSD will probably become the norm in laptops and desktops, this shouldn't be a problem for most people.

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#13

Post by ludwigvan » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 8:20 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #4

As of late, Seagate drives have been pretty crappy, which is a real shame given their former glory. Maybe this purchase will change something.

Agreed. Two of my latest Seagate purchases died while I was very satisfied with Samsung. It might be worse though, buying a Samsung drive, should one expect Seagate or Samsung quality in the future?

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#14

Post by wazoox » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 8:21 AM UTC

WD and Seagate now make 87% of all disk drives. Unsurprisingly, they just slashed warranty on various drives down from 5 to 3 years, and even down to only 1 or 2 years for some models. Oligopoly will suck for us consumers.

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#15

Post by wazoox » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 8:30 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #4

As of late, Seagate drives have been pretty crappy, which is a real shame given their former glory. Maybe this purchase will change something.

Storage professional here. Disk drives failure rate is usually 0.5 to 3% a year. Drives do fail, so you can't draw any statistical significant figures from the failure of a couple of drives among a total of four or five (or even ten or twenty).

However my company's selling drives by the thousands, and here's what I can say: Seagate barraccuda are the worst pieces of crap being sold since the infamous IBM 80GB debacle; their failure rate is 10% a year, no less. Unsurprisingly Seagate just dropped their warranty to ... 1 year! Keep away from these at all costs...

Seagate Constellation seem to be OK but I only have a few of these.

Hitachi 1, 2 and 3 TB look impressive: 1 failure among 2 thousand drives, in 2 years.

WD seem OK, but I haven't nearly enough of them to get significant numbers (a couple hundreds).

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#16

Post by bentlegen » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 8:35 AM UTC

andrewfelix wrote: post #11

In the short term this is good for Seagate. In the long term though, I think this is good for Samsung. More and more of our memory needs are being met by online storage. Sure we'll need NAND going into the future. But are we going to need it in the quantities that we currently demand when cloud storage is becoming more and more popular?

Online storage providers still need to purchase hard disks.

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#17

Post by jitbit » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 8:49 AM UTC

$1.4 billion, mates. $1.4 billion for a business with manufacturing plants, complicated global logistics... Now let me remind you that Facebook is valued 85 (!) times more.. o_O

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#18

Post by prodikl » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 8:50 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #10

prodikl wrote: post #7

With samsung the world leader in ram I would have thought they could've done some great things in ssd field. Bummer.

As the largest flash vendor, Samsung may win no matter which controllers are used. Seagate has no consumer SSDs so I can understand why they want to buy that business from Samsung.

Ah, the good 'ol iPhone bundling tactic. I'm definitely not an opponent of sticking to what you're good at, and doing it best. And with this deal, I guess that's what's happening with both companies!

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#19

Post by seqastian » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 9:05 AM UTC

1.4B .. money they will need to keep investors happy while burning money on smartphones

Re: Samsung Sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion

#20

Post by apike » Wed, Dec 21, 2011, 9:15 AM UTC

Apple is the largest buyer of SSDs in the world, but their largest supplier has been Samsung, a company they've been increasingly at odds with in the phone business.

In one day, it is announced that Samsung has sold this business, and that Apple has purchased a competing SSD supplier. Just like that, the shape of the market shifts dramatically.