14 DAY TRIAL // OCZ didn't go bankrupt all the way, but that's only because Toshiba stepped in and offered to buy all of its assets, which it has finished doing just now. The completion of the acquisition has been announced.
OCZ started out in 2002 as a memory maker and has since made various DDR RAM, video cards, USB drives and cooling products.
In recent years, it has mostly been making a living off solid-state drives, which is probably why it's sinking now.
The SSD market has pretty much matured, which means that several bigwigs have taken over most of it, leaving little for small fries.
Toshiba is one of those bigwigs, and it is assimilating what's left of OCZ technology. The acquisition has just been finalized.
"The acquisition of OCZ further expands our solid-state storage capabilities and represents Toshiba's commitment to this high-growth area," said Mr. Seiichi Mori, vice president of Toshiba's semiconductor and storage company and corporate vice president of Toshiba.
"Our goal is to offer a leading edge portfolio of solid state solutions to address the storage challenges faced by both client and enterprise customers, and the acquisition of OCZ is an ideal addition to our team in realizing this strategy."
OCZ will continue making SATA and PCI Express consumer SSDs for high-end applications, as well as SATA, SAS and PCIe enterprise drives.
Toshiba has the advantage of good NAND and controllers, which it will allow OCZ to use to make better products. Finally, the transaction will earn Toshiba an already established worldwide sales channel. OCZ's headquarters in San Jose, California will continue to be used, as will the design centers in Irvine (California), Tel Aviv (Israel), and Abingdon (UK).
"We are very excited to be part of the Toshiba family where we will continue to develop new and unique solid-state storage technologies that position the new entity as a market leader," said Ralph Schmitt, CEO for OCZ Storage Solutions.