Seagate Buys Maxtor

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

It’s official, Seagate is buying Maxtor in an all-stock deal valued at close to $2 billion USD. We Say: It’s ironic. The drive market is getting smaller and smaller as the demand for storage keeps going up and up. Hitachi snapped up IBM’s hard drive business, and now Seagate is swallowing up Maxtor. Who is left?

“Seagate has approached this transaction much differently than traditional mergers and acquisitions. This combination will deliver greater scale by leveraging Seagate’s successful business model and is not intended to be a traditional integration of product lines or operations,” said Bill Watkins, Seagate’s President and CEO. “The acquisition of Maxtor will further build on Seagate’s foundation as the premier global hard disc drive company and strengthens our ability to drive future growth by providing enhanced operating scale and key resources to fuel product innovation, maximize efficiency and realize significant cost benefits. The scale gained with this acquisition is needed to meet the world’s growing demand for sharing and storing digital content. Seagate’s continued investment in burgeoning markets like Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions, as well as our core computing markets, has seen our product set grow from eight to 30 products over the last three years and is now on pace to reach almost 50 products over the next two years. Leveraging increased scale with Seagate’s successful product platform strategy, we believe the combined company is best-positioned to deliver to global customers a more compelling, diverse set of products at more competitive prices, to meet the growing demand for storage.” Source: Seagate