Japan's Toshiba, Fujitsu conclude hard drive deal

TOKYO, JAPAN: Japan's Toshiba Corp said on Thursday it has taken over Fujitsu Ltd's loss-making hard drive business as it seeks to eke out growth in notebook PC hard drives in a market dominated by bigger rivals.

The conclusion of the 30 billion yen ($334 million) deal, first announced in February, had been postponed three times due to delays in obtaining approval from an anti-trust regulator.

Toshiba, which competes with bigger rivals Seagate Technology, Western Digital Corp and Hitachi Ltd, now holds 80.1 percent of Fujitsu's HDD operation, and will raise that to 100 percent by December next year.

Toshiba is aiming for hard drive sales of 600 billion yen in the year ending March 2012, and 20 percent of the market in the year ending March 2016. Toshiba and Fujitsu together had about a 13 percent market share in April-June, according to research firms IDC and TSR Research.