Confirming last month's rumors, Toshiba and Fujitsu say they've now reached an agreement to bring their hard drive operations under the same roof. As part of the agreement, Fujitsu will spin off its hard drive-related businesses into a separate company, and Toshiba will acquire approximately an 80% stake in that business. Fujitsu will relinquish its sub-20% stake after a "certain period of time," turning the business into a fully owned Toshiba subsidiary.
The two Japanese firms plan to sign a contract soon and finish the transaction in the first fiscal quarter of this year. Thanks to the deal, Toshiba will not only gain a stronger foothold in the mobile hard drive market, but it will also get a foot in the door of the enterprise storage arena, where Fujitsu already has a presence. Toshiba expects to raise its share of the global hard disk drive market to "over 20 percent by 2015."
Beyond mechanical storage, Toshiba says the deal will also let it push its solid-state drives into the enterprise market. Intel and Samsung have both announced enterprise SSDs in recent month, and even Seagate plans to enter that market this year.
