Western Digital to buy Hitachi GST

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"We believe this step will result in several key benefits-enhanced R&D capabilities, innovation and expansion of a rich product portfolio, comprehensive market coverage and scale that will enhance our cost structure and ability to compete in a dynamic marketplace," said John Coyne, president and CEO of WD.

The hard disk drive (HDD) industry is about to go through possible its final round of consolidation following the announcement that Western Digital is going to buy Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for a cool $4.3 billion, of which $2.5 billion will be new debt. Right now it's ony a view HDD vendor, back to 2006 Seagate acquired Maxtor, Toshiba bought Fujitsu at 2009. But this should be the end of the consolidation in the HDD market. All the remaining players are probably too big to be bought by any other others, and now that we're down to four major players the competition authorities will take a very long look at any further consolidation. Having said that, the presence of the other three should allow this acquision to avoid any blockage.