Fujitsu would sell all of its plants–including those in Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines–for between 70 billion yen and 100 billion yen (approximately $660 million to $944 million), according to Japan’s Nikkei news service.
The deal would be finalized by the end of the year, according to Nikkei.
Solid-state drive suppliers such Intel, Micron Technology, Samsung, and STEC are also beginning to target SSDs as replacements for hard disk drives in the enterprise.
Beyond the brutal price competition that is typical in the hard disk drive industry, there is a clear-and-present threat now from solid-state drives. Until this year relegated to digital camera and music player storage, solid-state drives are now making inroads–albeit small–in laptops, particularly ultraportables like the MacBook Air, Dell’s new E4200 line, and Netbooks such as the Asus Eee PC.
A Western Digital representative would not comment on the report.
Fujitsu is in talks to sell its hard disk drive business to Western Digital, according to a Japan-based report.
This would be one of the largest business unit sell-offs for a Japanese electronics company, Nikkei said, adding that Fujitsu’s hard disk drive business has been posting losses.
Western Digital is the second-largest hard disk drive maker in the world behind Seagate Technology. Fujitsu’s HDD unit is ranked sixth.