Fujitsu kills HDD head manufacturing

FUJITSU HAS announced it'll be shutting down its HDD head manufacturing facility in Nagano, Japan, by the end of March.

The move is part of the bigger plan to stop bleeding money consolidate and involves taking a one-time five billion Yen (~$65 million) hit and shuffling its 360 employees to "new jobs".

The Japanese giant's HDD manufacturing business has been trying to sell itself off for the past months and is in talks with potential buyers, although it hasn't had much luck so far.

This decision follows another tough call made just a few months ago as the company gave up on plasma TVs.

A carefully-timed release, a few hours after the manufacturing announcement, added some frosting to the HDD business cake as the company announced development of a HDD encryption standard based on Opal SSC. Maybe this'll get the ball rolling.

Fujitsu is currently undergoing a "refocusing", as they call it, of its core business and is strengthening its presence as a box maker in desktop, mobile and server markets, despite the deteriorating economies worldwide. µ