Seagate acquisition of Samsung's hard drive business is approved

STORAGE VENDOR Seagate's acquisition of Samsung's hard drive business has been approved by the European Commission (EC).

Following an in-depth investigation, the European Commission has given the go-ahead for Seagate to buy Samsung's hard drive division. We first reported on the £845 million deal back in April.

The EC said, "Although the merger will further consolidate markets that are already highly concentrated, the Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area or any substantial part of it."

The main impact of the merger will be in the 3.5in hard drive market rather than the 2.5in sector, where Samsung is not a strong competitor, according to the EC. After the deal, there will remain three strong suppliers for 3.5in hard drives in Seagate along with Western Digital (WD) and Hitachi. There are four vendors of 2.5in hard drives when you add Toshiba to the first three.

The EC also found that the removing Samsung from the equation is unlikely to cause a risk of coordination between the remaining vendors.

The agreement means that Samsung will supply Seagate with NAND flash memory for use in its solid state drives and other products. Seagate will supply Samsung with disk drives for use in its range of products including PCs and laptops.

A deal that involves WD acquiring Hitachi's solid state drive business remains pending, added the EC. µ