14 DAY TRIAL // Well-known SSD company OCZ has apparently been sold to HDD company Seagate. Despite of its market value of about $300 million, it seems we were right and the company has been sold for a little more than 1 billion dollars.
We reported here about the potential deal and the money exchange it would imply, and now, hardware experts from BrightSideofNews.com have reportedly obtained unofficial confirmation that Seagate has completed the deal and the financial details would be announced today.
This is probably very good news for OCZ’s CEO, Mr. Ryan Petersen, who managed to take OCZ from a niche DRAM memory module manufacturer worth $150 million per year to the best SSD company in the world, rolling more than $700 million each year.
Seagate is a complete failure when it comes to SSD drives, and it has even recalled a series of “professional” products that proved to be less professional than what true professionals desire.
The giant HDD company is now enjoying a global duopoly of the world’s HDD market alongside Western Digital, and both are currently doing their best to keep the HDD prices artificially up and maintain their cartel position.
OCZ was planning to announce their first truly in-house designed SSD controller, which we reported about here.
The chip has recently taped out from TSMC and OCZ’s CEO called it a controller that would change the world of the SSD market.
SSD enthusiasts should not worry about having to buy new drives in the following years, as what they have now will hardly become obsolete any time soon.
In our opinion, Seagate will stop, or at least slow down, the R&D cycle at OCZ and will charge considerable price premiums for each small increase in performance.
The company has absolutely no interest in making SSDs faster or cheaper, so we should all forget about 50% yearly price reductions.
We'd like to congratulate Mr. Ryan Petersen and the great OCZ / Indilinx team, and we hope to see him building another, even more successful SSD company.
UPDATE: Since the unofficial reports were talking about an incoming announcement from the buyer, we must mention that Seagate Technology has just posted its financial reports and we covered it here, but there was no mention about OCZ.
There's no mention about the so-called "OCZ deal," but we find it conspicuous that both companies made official announcements during the same day while not releasing any disclaimers.
Like we said here, as OCZ’s company value increased, it has been able to secure better financing for its investments and operations, thus allowing it to further execute its roadmap.
This aspect, along with the fact that the shares went up, is cause for OCZ to ask a greater amount for the deal or simply to say pass.
We shall wait and see, but we must also take into account the fact that Seagate just hired a new head for its almost non-existent SSD business.
Such an initiative may point to the fact that a serious SSD move is very close at Seagate and they need the right man to coordinate things.
Our take on things is that the deal is not yet finalized and thus was not announced, but the negotiations may go either way.