
Western digital acquires Hitachi Global Storage Tech for $4.3B - yread
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/07/western-digital-drops-4-3-billion-to-acquire-hitachi-gst-enter/
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bryanlarsen
Bad headline: WD acquired Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

The Hitachi company itself is a monster that makes WD look like a mom & pop
operation. What you see as a consumer is dwarfed by its industrial products
and much, much more.

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Splines
There's something about these large Japanese conglomerates that just don't
seem to have any parallel in the US. GE might be the closest thing, but even
though it's a larger company it doesn't seem to have the finger-in-every-pie
feel that these Asian conglomerates do (e.g., Hyundai, Fuji, Mitsubishi, ...)

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asnyder
The US definitely has parallels. You can take almost any brand, and trace it
back to a handful of large corporations. The Japanese are just more open about
it, whereas US companies have subsidiaries that falsely suggest competition.

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yread
Hitachi hard disks had highest failure rates.

[http://www.hardware.fr/articles/810-6/taux-pannes-
composants...](http://www.hardware.fr/articles/810-6/taux-pannes-
composants.html)

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wazoox
In the past few years, they had the lowest failure rate, by a large margin, on
professional grade drives. I say that having set up and sold many thousands
hard drives since 2003.

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amitraman1
WD stock is up today. IT seems like a great deal, WD can now sell more
aggressively to businesses.

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jamesbressi
Maybe you forgot this? Hitachi School House Rock video...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb_PyKuI7II>

"Get Perpendicular" Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

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joeybaker
The business calculus is a bit strange here. WD and Hitachi are in the part of
the storage market that has to be pretty close to it's peak. The HDD business
seems to have grown in 2010 [http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-
news/4213390/Western-Digi...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-
news/4213390/Western-Digital-grabs-disk-drive-lead) but it's pretty doubtful
that the trend will continue, and it seems like there's a pretty sharp cliff
coming.

That in mind, why pay $4.3B for a company that only has 2-5 years left in a
dying, $0.6B industry that has low profit margins?

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rosser
This isn't just about hard drives. Hitachi Storage also makes some pretty huge
-- and well-regarded -- SANs, and enterprise storage is one area into which
I've never really seen WD make much headway. This acquisition would make them
a full-spectrum player in the storage market.

Enterprise storage is also an area with rather higher profit margins than
merely hawking spinning rust.

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wmf
But HGST != HDS.

