UK's Competition and Markets Authority sticks probe in SK Hynix's $9bn proposed buy of Intel's NAND and SSD units Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating SK Hynix's agreed $9bn purchase of Intel's NAND and SSD businesses to ascertain if the deal would negatively impact the local buyers. The competition regulator, a non-ministerial government department, is inviting interested parties to comment over the next …
The greatest danger is not any one specific merger or buyout, but that gradual conglomeration ultimately results in a single effective provider of any given device type. That position, while obviously maximally profitable for the provider, is a one of maximal fragility for the community at large.
Not having alternatives to fall back on is, however, becoming a societal norm. Communications convergence, for example, is eliminating resilience and excluding significant sectors of society (e.g. on the news this morning, 18% of the British public doesn't have reliable connectivity to the internet, while government in increasingly implementing "digital by default").
Ultimately, competition is useful in the technology manufacturing - it forces providers to ensure their products are both good and available. As we've seen in the OS arena, absence of real competition leads to provider complacency and poor products and services.
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