Rumour Mill : Seagate Wants To Buy Flash Manufacturer Sandisk

The world's largest hard disk manufacturer Seagate is apparently planning to take over Sandisk, a specialist in Flash storage or SSDs, in a bid to get a foothold in an explosive market.

EETimes wrote that this was the most talked-about rumour at the Flash Memory Summit, a rumour that has served to boost Sandisk's share price by nearly 10 percent yesterday afternoon.

But Seagate's core properties are not being threatened by SSD technology since Solid state devices still have to catch up on price and capacity, something that is not going to happen in the next five years or so.

The company though could be looking to corner the market and boost its IP portfolio with the purchase; it has already showed its intentions after it launched a lawsuit against SSD company STEC, saying that the later had infringed its patents.

Seagate, who acquired Maxtor in 2005, already owns some shares in Sandisk through a complex arrangement which saw Veritas software spun off and taking control of Seagate's shares in Sandisk.

Another rumour that was floated pointed to a potential acquisition of Intel's portion of the NAND flash Joint venture that the latter shares with Semiconductor giant Micron. Tags: Hard Drives, Solid State, seagate