TAIPEI, Taiwan — Western Digital (WD) and SanDisk have agreed that WD will acquire SanDisk for a total equity value of $19 billion dollars in cash and stock. According to the companies, the acquisition will make WD the largest digital storage company by revenue. The research firm TrendForce cited that this will help popularize SSD, and there will be more mergers and acquisitions in the storage industry.
According to TrendForce, SanDisk is a major player in the NAND flash memory market with flash products spanning consumer flash cards and USB sticks to client and enterprise SSDs as well as storage systems and supporting software. Sales of SSD has been increasing in these two years, which will occupy 30 percent of NAND flash demand, the strongest demand of NAND flash.
TrendForce considered that SSD will be a crucial market for semiconductor and storage firms, those who have core technologies of SSD are popular among storage and NAND flash firms. In other words, a target of merger and acquisition.
Therefore, WD will undoubtedly be combining its enterprise SSD operations with those of SanDisk in order to streamline the business.
Nevertheless, many smaller SSD manufacturers will face pressure by emerging mega-storage companies that will have vertical integration of flash chips and controllers. There will be more mergers and acquisitions in the storage industry, based on TrendForce.
Meanwhile, it is predictable that within a few years the non-volatile memory industry will look much different than it does today.
