If you dream of a day that spinny, crashy hard drives are fully replaced by cool, quiet flash memory, then you probably know Samsung makes a lot of the chips, and that SanDisk sells a lot of them in stores. According to the WSJ, Samsung wants a piece of the retail action, because it announced it had offered to buy SanDisk for $US5.8 billion, potentially with the aim of absorbing and/or eliminating SanDisk’s brand and distinct products altogether. Even though this was a seriously nice offer given SanDisk’s crappy stock performance of late, the company told Samsung to eff off, calling it an “opportunistic attempt” to pick up SanDisk while it’s down. Samsung says that SanDisk “continues to cling to unrealistic expectations.” Tell me, why does this intended corporate marriage sound so much like my parents’ divorce? [WSJ]
Terence David Carroll
September 17, 2008 at 10:17 PM
San Disk exhibits a strong degree of genuine independence in its offerings to the market place.
It is not just a range of increased performance branded products but also improved access and reliability of data retention.
Samsung shares some of this quest for quality, Samsung branded display screens are some of the industry best. Never-the-less
Report Permalinkany acquisitor of San Disk is likely to be motivated by the
general move of the industry towards minimum acceptable performance standards and functionality which may see either the total removal of San Disks products form the market or a significant price adjustment into the astropheric premium spectrum, and even then possibly eventual removal. [ T.D. Carroll, M.A.(Cantab.) ]