Seagate wraps up acquisition of Samsung hard drive business
updated 10:20 am EST, Tue December 20, 2011
Seagate, Samsung complete acquisition process
Hard drive maker Seagate has completed its buyout of Samsung's hard disk drive business first announced back in April. Seagate will take over Samsung's M8 product line of high-capacity, 2.5-inch drives and employees such as senior managers, designers and engineers from Samsung's Korean plant. They will continue to focus on small form-factor drives for notebooks and similarly small ahrdware.
N.Y. Park, senior VP and general manager, will oversee Seagate’s product development activities in Korea and serve as country manager of the Korea design center. He will report to Bob Whitmore, executive vice president and CTO at Seagate.
Seagate is also supplying disk drives to Samsung for use in PCs, notebooks and other home electronics. Samsung, on the other hand, provides semiconductor products in Seagate solid-state drives, hybrid drives, and others.
The companies' patent cross-license agreement has deepened, and they have made plans to expand co-developing enterprise storage solutions.
Seagate will continue to brand Samsung hard drives for 12 months to ease the transition. Samsung will put an executive on Seagate's board of directors.
