Western Digital has just announced that they have put a major deal in place to acquire a top competitor in their field. Hitachi Global Storage technologies are now being acquired by Western Digital.
This is not the first time a major competitor has been bought out. Back in 2005 Seagate purchased Maxtor for just about $2 billion. The deal for Hitachi is broken down to #3.5 billion in cash and $730 million in Western Digital common stock. It is unclear how this deal with work on whether or not Western Digital will keep the Hitachi brand name or use some of the more unique designs Hitachi has been developing and label it a Western Digital product. This is a very interesting situation as now it has come down to a two dog race in Western Digital and Seagate. There is still some competition the wings like Samsung but we all know that the two main hard drive companies are WD and Seagate.