Western Digital Western Digital Buys SanDisk for $19 Billion (€16.75 Billion)

[vissha]

Western Digital Buys SanDisk for $19 Billion (€16.75 Billion)

Transaction includes both cash and stock options

Western Digital, the renowned hard drive maker, has announced today that it bought SanDisk, an American company that manufactures and sells flash memory storage devices and software.

According to the transaction's details, Western Digital has agreed to buy all of SanDisk shares for a combination of cash and stock, with SanDisk stock valued at $86.50 (€76.23), 15% higher than the price at which the shares were valued on the stock market a day prior.

Following the acquisition, Western Digital's CEO Steve Milligan will continue to serve as the company's CEO, while SanDisk CEO, Sanjay Mehrotra, will join the Western Digital board.

The move is not surprising since earlier this month there were rumors of SanDisk actively looking for a buyer.

Both SanDisk and Western Digital have reported good results in their last quarter financial results.

Western Digital is entering the flash memory storage market, via SanDisk

After more and more smartphone and tablet manufacturers have been deploying flash memory with their products, WD's recent move seems to be an attempt at getting a piece of the flash memory market pie, on which SanDisk is currently seen as the third-best player behind Samsung and Toshiba.

Western Digital's presence in this market was minimal, even if in December 2014 WD acquired Skyera, a flash-based storage development company.

Despite being ranked third in the flash memory storage market, SanDisk's situation isn't rosy either. Earlier this year, Apple agreed to buy Samsung chips for its line of iPhone, iPad, and Mac products, dropping SanDisk's SSDs, which it used until that point. Apple was by far SanDisk's bigger customer, accounting for a fifth of its revenue.

The move didn't go well on the stock market and for SanDisk's investors, and from that point on the "looking for a buyer" rumors started surfacing once every few weeks.

Source

@Nsaners: My thought about this is very bad. WD can't be trusted any more. You can read the last few threads in nsane on WD. One reader had also commented on the same to softpedia article. SanDisk not in my life anymore.

[DKT27]

They had to do it. One of the world's biggest HDD maker just did not have anything when it came to SSDs. Imagine buying a HDD from WD only to find that they have not much to offer when it came to SSDs.

Not sure why Intel is not ranked top in the revenue list though.

[Cereberus]

WD recent past purchases involved ssd IP buyovers. So this recent purchase is just another involving ssd.

If i'm not mistaken Samsung still holds the top spot for market share for ssds, because they make all parts of ssds and don't really need to rely on others as much. in the last 1-2 years their 3d nand mass production has been cranked up.

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/about-us/news/12990

when i think of WD what comes to mind is HDDs from their WD and HGST hdd divisions. HDDs is here to stay for high capacity drives especially for NAS hdds.

because their mechanical however, the best you can expect them to last is 3-5 years assuming that particular model isn't shit like the notorious seagate 3tb back in the day which just had crazy failure rates.

until a technology comes along that

1. has lots of capacity storage space

2. does it cheaply

3. more or less same or better performance as a 7,200 rpm HDD

4. more durable (preferably not mechanical to avoid the similar issues of durability)

Intel/Micron X-point could possibly fill that bill? When it comes out sometime in the next 1-2 years or so, we can see what those devices will be like.

Simply put, 3D XPoint is an intermediary storage layer between NAND and DRAM that offers 1000 times more speed and endurance than NAND along with 10 times the density of DRAM. To top it off, it is persistent, meaning it doesn't lose data when power is removed.

Intel Optane

One thing Intel formally announced at IDF was the 3D XPoint product branding, specifically on the storage side—that is, a 3D XPoint device that presents itself as block storage. The products that will emerge with the Optane branding will not only use 3D XPoint, but will come with optimized controllers, interfaces and software. Those products will come in the SSD form factors, namely add-in cards (AIC), M.2 and U.2 flavors.

It might seem at first glance that the average person doesn’t need faster storage. He is probably used to waiting fifteen minutes to copy a movie from one computer to a flash drive or memory stick. But imagine if he could do that in just a few seconds!

The new 3D X-point memory is even more useful than that-perhaps a thousand times more- if this brainchild of Intel Corporation and Micron Technology is launched next year as expected. It would bring a revolution to the world of big data, the Internet of Things and high definition streaming.

3D XPoint technology can turn immense amount of data into valuable information in nanoseconds. For example, retailers may use 3D XPoint technology to more quickly identify fraud detection patterns in financial transactions; healthcare researchers could process and analyze larger data sets in real time, accelerating complex tasks such as genetic analysis and disease tracking.

The performance benefits of 3D XPoint technology could also enhance the PC experience, allowing consumers to enjoy faster interactive social media and collaboration as well as more immersive gaming experiences. The non-volatile nature of the technology also makes it a great choice for a variety of low-latency storage applications since data is not erased when the device is powered off.

For Intel, the 3D XPoint technology is a major breakthrough in memory process technology and the first new memory category since the introduction of NAND flash in 1989. The explosion of connected devices and digital services is generating massive amounts of new data.

To make this data useful, it must be stored and analyzed very quickly, creating challenges for service providers and system builders who must balance cost, power and performance trade-offs when they design memory and storage solutions. 3D XPoint technology combines the performance, density, power, non-volatility and cost advantages of all available memory technologies on the market today.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/07/intels-3d-x-point-1000-times-faster-than-flash/

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-micron-3d-xpoint-updates,4286.html

The more interesting side effects of 3D XPoint will likely come from IMFT’s competition. Samsung, in particular, is in a nice spot to flood the market with either of the opposing NAND or DRAM mediums. It is in the process of building a $23 billion fab that will be operational by 2017, and that, by some estimates, is large enough to equal the 300mm wafer production of SK Hynix and SanDisk combined.

Samsung isn’t commenting on what its "superfab" will be used for, but it can pump out either NAND or DRAM. If Samsung chooses to flood the market with cheap NAND on one end and cheap DRAM on the opposite end, it can create enough price pressure to relegate 3D XPoint to niche applications, at least until Samsung is ready to roll out its competing technology.

So the way i see it, though Samsung has the lead in 3d nand and ssds in terms of market share; intel can really eat into that space using their x-point technology that just seems vastly better on specs alone. So samsungs only defense to that is to reduce their nand ssd pricings to be more competitive/attractive, so people don't just dump them and just go straight for x-point storage devices.

Micron also stands to benefit since x-point was an intel/micro joint venture.

And WD is basically just getting it's foot in the door to product differentiate so they aren't limited to only hdds. So wd's market share will be hgst + sandisk combined, if this buyout for sandisk goes through anyway.

[RejZoR]

This was a bit unexpected. I like WD drives, they seem to be more reliable than others from my experience. I also like SanDisk. I just hate its support which is crap. I hope WD will kick them in the balls so they wake up.

[Cereberus]

This was a bit unexpected. I like WD drives, they seem to be more reliable than others from my experience. I also like SanDisk. I just hate its support which is crap. I hope WD will kick them in the balls so they wake up.

the recent scandal how bad wd and possibly other brands for self encrypted portable drives was just uncovered by security researches. so thats probably dampen the mood for this recent take over ^_^