back to article EU parks disk drive mergers ahead of competition probe

The European Commission has run up red flags over the competition implications of the disk drive industry's current game of musical takeovers. Brussels has said that following a preliminary probe, it will conduct "in-depth investigations" into both Seagate's proposed takeover of Samsung's hard disk drive operations, and …

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  1. Pseu Donyme
    Devil

    I'd say

    >= 50 % market share -> Sorry, you can't get bigger than that.

    Actually I'd go further than just limiting consolidation, that is, forcing splitting (or converting to a public / regulated, profit-limited monopoly). That is, ensuring a fair deal to the consumer should trump shareholder interest when these are mutually exclusive. Split / conversion to utility would be a risk an investor bears, just as when something does not work and goes bankrupt, only here something was working too well for the company / shareholder and but not well for the consumer.

    [Thanks for the new icons, BTW :) ... could use hammer and sickle here, but close enough I guess ]

  2. Mark 65

    No way

    Searching on Dabs for 3.5" internal drives reveals this list...

    Western Digital (61)

    Seagate (45)

    Hitachi (26)

    HP (18)

    Samsung (6)

    Toshiba (5)

    Fujitsu (5)

    Lenovo (2)

    IBM (1)

    Buffalo (1)

    Letting positions 1 and 2 take out 3 and 5 doesn't make sense especially after Maxtor got swallowed whole. I know these figures will vary by seller but the top 5 are essentially the top 5 across most. Samsung and HP HD manufacture split off together or some other smaller player combo - maybe - but not the top two.

    I don't think that any further consolidation in this industry involving WD or Seagate serves the consumer in any way.

    1. Pondule

      HP don't make hard disks

      Title says it

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