After a series of rumors, Fujitsu is reported to have finally decided to sell its hard disk drive business to Toshiba. The news comes after Fujitsu announced on Wednesday that it would discontinue its hard disk drive head business on March 31, 2009, as part of a broader restructuring plan. This could mean that, according to available details, Toshiba has bought only a part of Fujitsu's HDD business, more specifically the one that doesn't include the HDD head manufacturing part.Earlier this week, Fujitsu announced that it would close its HDD head manufacturing operations performed at the Nagano Plant. As a result, the company will have to reassign 360 employees, currently working at the site, to other operations within the Fujitsu Group. Aside from HDD head manufacturing, the Nagano Plant also deals with the manufacturing of printed circuit boards designed for servers and telecommunications equipment. These operations are expected to continue at the plant, after March 31. Fujitsu also said that it would take a charge of $56 million in relation to the transition of the 360 employees, a figure that would be attributed to the company's final 2008 quarter.
Currently, Fujitsu hard drive manufacturing operations include facilities in the Philippines and Thailand. According to The Register, the company's Yamagata drive media plant isn't going to be part of the deal with Toshiba, leaving only the sites in Philippines and Thailand. However, there are rumors according to which Toshiba doesn't require the manufacturing operation in Thailand, meaning that approximately 7000 jobs could be cut.
The official selling price is yet to be unveiled, but according to reports, that number could be in the area of 30 to 40 billion yen, or approximately $340m to $450m. The transaction is expected to provide Toshiba with a profitable business, also enabling the company, which is currently the fifth largest vendor of HDDs, to gain a better market share.
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