国内英语新闻:Western Digital to buy Hitachi's hard drive unit

SAN FRANCISCO, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The world's leading hard rive producer Western Digital Corp. on Monday announced that it has agreed to buy Hitachi Ltd.'s hard disk drive unit for about 4. 3 billion U.S. dollars, a move that will create a dominant player in the industry.

Western Digital said that it plans to acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., in cash and stock.

The proposed combination will result in a customer-focused storage company with the industry's broadest product lineup backed by a rich technology portfolio, Western Digital said.

According to their agreement, the resulting company will retain the Western Digital name and remain headquartered in Irvine in the U.S. state of California.

The transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close during the third quarter of 2011.

With the purchase, Western Digital will claim 49.6 percent share of global hard disk drive unit shipments based on latest quarterly statistics, compared to 29.4 percent for Seagate Technology LLC, the industry's No. 2 supplier, research firm iSuppli pointed out.

The deal will give Western Digital a lead of 20.2 percentage points over Seagate, up from a mere 2 points without the acquisition, iSuppli said in a research note released Monday.

The acquisition will also allow Western Digital to enter the critical enterprise hard disk drive segment, where it currently is only a marginal player.

Analysts believed that the purchase might be a consequence of declining hard disk drive shipments, which are being impacted by the rising sales of tablet computers, which don't use hard disk drives and are cutting into the sales of mobile PCs, a major market for hard drives.

"Amid weaker industry conditions, organic sales growth is more difficult to achieve, prompting hard disk drive suppliers to engage in acquisitions to gain market share," iSuppli noted.