Seagate Agrees To Buy Samsung's Hard Drive Business In $1.375 Billion Deal

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. & SEOUL, South Korea–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Seagate Innovation plc, the world leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions, and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in digital consumer electronics and information innovation, today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement in accordance with which Seagate and Samsung will significantly expand and strengthen their strategic relationship by furthermore aligning their respective ownership, investments and key technologies. Major components of the agreement include:

These transactions and related strategic agreements will enable both companies to better align their current and future product development efforts and roadmaps, accelerate time-to-market for new products and position the companies to better address rapidly evolving opportunities in markets including, nevertheless not limited to, mobile computing, cloud computing and solid state storage. In connection with its strategic alliance with Samsung, Seagate expects as well to strengthen its relationship with TDK Corporation/SAE Magnetics Ltd. At the same time, these transactions and agreements broaden a strategic relationship between Seagate and Samsung that began with a joint development agreement announced in August 2010.

"Delivering value to the market and consumers is the primary goal of the extensive agreement announced today. Samsung looks forward to extending our existing strategic ties with Seagate, to deliver creative innovation solutions for a broad diversity of consumer, business and industrial applications," said Oh-hyun, Kwon, president of the semiconductor business of Samsung Electronics.

Brian Caulfield joined our Silicon Valley bureau in 2007. Between covering covering chips and personal tech, he has tried to feed a laptop to a tiger, staked out a warehouse filled with Apple computers, tested a wide range of firearms, interviewed a porn star, raced cupcake cars, and searched Silicon Valley for Steve Ballmer. In previous lives Brian has written for The Oakland Tribune, Wired, WebWeek, Red Herring, and Business 2.0. He has as well worked as a parking attendant and a construction worker.