The world of mass storage is mostly controlled by four main manufacturers. Wester Digital, Samsung, Hitachi, and Seagate. The big news of the day year for this quite closed off industry is that Western Digital is buying the Hitachi hard drive division and Seagate is buying the Samsung hard drive division.
The major hard drive competitors will be reduced from four to two.
Hitachi recently plead guilty in the U.S. to bid-rigging and price-fixing conspiracies. Samsung recently plead guilty in the U.S. to a price-fixing conspiracy. The European Commission is investigating both the Western Digital-Hitachi and the Seagate-Samsung hard drive division mergers. Apparently there is no action by the U.S. government concerning the mergers. The big question is will having only two major makers of hard drives make it easier to raise prices?
