DailyTech - Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba Talk Storage Joint Venture

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Hardware Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba Talk Storage Joint Venture
Purav Sanghani - January 14, 2008 4:18 PM

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13 comment(s) - last by PandaBear.. on Jan 21 at 4:24 PM

Three of the largest storage technology companies to possibly combine powers in 2008

Recently, Hitachi GST failed to sell a major portion of the company to U.S.-based private-equity firm, Silver Lake, in a move to raise capital to keep the company competitive. The deal went no further after Silver Lake announced it wanted majority control of the company.

A CNET report claims knowledge of a possible joint venture between Hitachi GST and the storage divisions of Toshiba and Fujitsu. None of the three companies would comment about the story.

A competitor of the three, who declined to let DailyTech publish his name, adds an observation about the storage industry. "In 1990, there were 60 storage companies in the world. Everyone could do it. Now we have seven."

Few storage companies today are truly unique. With the rise of platter-specialty companies like Komag, most storage companies today can only provide reference-designed hard drives. Hitachi GST, which has no in-house platter production, bucks at the whim of its platter supplier. A partnership with a platter manufacturer like Toshiba would allow for new unique designs.

A combination of the three Japanese storage companies would help dethrone U.S. giants Seagate and Western Digital. Sources close to the deal claim the three agreed to reach an official decision about the proposed deal by April 1st; the first day of the Japanese fiscal year.

Even with Hitachi GST's technological advances in the hard disk drive industry -- such as improvements in hard drive head technology -- it will take more than increased capacity to boost the company back into the starting line up.

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New company name?

By Mitch101 on 1/14/2008 5:05:30 PM , Rating: 3

Will the new company name be called ToFujHi?

Pronounced Tofutti

RE: New company name?

By retrospooty on 1/14/2008 6:00:51 PM , Rating: 2

And what are they going to do with all those joints once they store them... Also, its far better to store prior to rolling, and only roll as you go.

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RE: New company name?

By TSS on 1/14/2008 8:00:55 PM , Rating: 2

more like FujHiTo

pronounced fujito. sound familiar? :P

anyway i'll be looking forward to the day they replace the platter for a crystal, or some sci-fi stuff like that.

with HvD on the horizon (hope they'll post some more news this year) i can't help but wonder when we'll use lasers and cubes for out data, at a reasonable price of course.

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RE: New company name?

By AnnihilatorX on 1/14/2008 10:04:51 PM , Rating: 2

Basic Japanese vowels come in letter pairs except tsu, shi and n) (Basic, i.e. Not counting compounds like jyu)
So Fujitsu will never be abbreviated to Fuj

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Ultra High Capacity HD?

By iwod on 1/14/2008 8:41:59 PM , Rating: 2

I hope this could means Ultra High capacity HD, didn't Fujitsu
announced something about Pattern Platter that could get 1 Tb per square inch?

With all those HD video coming in we definitely need MUCH bigger Hard Disk.

RE: Ultra High Capacity HD?

By inperfectdarkness on 1/15/2008 12:29:31 PM , Rating: 2

platters are dead. ssd will overtake the entire HD market within 5 years. if this merger helps them compete...i'm all for it. the more competition, the faster prices come down.

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RE: Ultra High Capacity HD?

By Oregonian2 on 1/16/2008 2:08:42 PM , Rating: 2

I just can't wait to see what a 1-TB SSD drive goes for. Not spendy even now for a hard disk -- and dropping even more as we speak. 750GB ones are almost into chicken-feed levels already (HD, not SSD).

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RE: Ultra High Capacity HD?

By PandaBear on 1/21/2008 4:15:15 PM , Rating: 2

It will be quite a while to dethrone the 3.5" market for video and desktop. SSD is way too expensive for the performance and size (used to be 4x, now probably even more).

The only way to make HD obsolete is to make the low end cheap. HD cost $50 minimum regardless of size, so a reasonable size SSD has to cost $40 or so to enter the low end desktop, that means 64GB for $40, not any time soon.

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GO HARD DRIVES

By phatboye on 1/14/2008 4:57:23 PM , Rating: 1

LET OUR POWERS COMBINE. HITACHI, TOSHIBA, FUJITSU!!! By your powers combined I am CAPTAIN HARD DRIVE.

GO HARD DRIVES!

I am bored =/

RE: GO HARD DRIVES

By Inkjammer on 1/14/2008 11:15:39 PM , Rating: 4

Do they battle evil villians with appropriately corny names based off of computing like "Head Crash" "Dark Platter" and "Buff Overdrive"?

It'd be like TRON. Except not cool in any way.

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Ding a ling a ling

By Highbuzz on 1/14/2008 5:39:34 PM , Rating: 3

Boo for monopolies. Develop your own tech and compete ffs.

RE: Ding a ling a ling

By PandaBear on 1/21/2008 4:24:22 PM , Rating: 2

Japanese HD are too expensive to compete with the US. That's one thing that Japanese can't compete (I came from Maxtor, so I know how cut throat this industry is).

There is no money in the Drive industry, all the money is in the components side, like head, media (platter), ASIC, channel, suspensions, etc. The margin was 6-8% last time I heard and the pace is too fast that Japanese can't keep up.

Seagate and WD wins because they have their own Head and Platter. Maxtor was losing big time in the past because they have to buy their head. Now Hitachi (former IBM) can keep up but their R&D and manufacturing aren't as efficient as the US,they can survive but aren't making enough $. Toshiba and Fujitsu, they haven't been doing any 3.5" ATA because they can't compete.

Now that 2.5" is mainstream due to laptop, Seagate and WD are entering that market, and drive the margin so low that ToFu (Toshiba and Fujitsu) want out. Who can they turn to? Hitachi. Panasonic (MKE)was doing ok when Quantum contract them to build the drives, but when Quantum quit using MKE, they shut that business down and convert the factory to build VCR instead.

I see the only survivors to be: 1) Seagate - vertically integrated, very efficient, 2) WD - semi-efficient, paid their people peanuts, but have what it takes to survive short time until some giants bought them out, 3) HiToFu, Hitachi bough out Toshiba and Fujitsu and stay alive, capturing the SCSI business and gradually exit the 3.5" or 2.5" where there are no money, 4) Samsung, keep going at it regardless of loss because the company is so huge, like the way they flood the DRAM market to drive the weaklings out of businesses, they will survive by either throwing so much money at it or buy out WD when WD falls.

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