Seagate now officially owns Samsung’s hard drive business

Eight months and $1.4 billion of stock and cash later, Seagate has finished purchasing rival Samsung’s hard drive business. As originally announced in April of this year, there are many repercussions to the deal. Seagate will get a cadre of Samsung managers and employees, and Samsung solid-stage storage for its hybrid drives, too. Meanwhile, Samsung gets a 9.6 percent ownership stake in Seagate, a good bit of cash, and supplies of Seagate hard drives for its computers. Some hard drives will retain the Samsung name for twelve months while Seagate realigns the brand. What do we, the consumers get? Nothing, we’re hoping, but there’s definitely the possibility of reduced competition. Assuming the Western Digital / Hitachi hard drive takeover also goes through, and SSD manufacturers don’t improve capacity fast, warranty reductions on hard drives might only be the beginning. Not that hard drive prices weren’t pretty low already, mind you, before all the Thailand flooding.