The only remaining "hole card" is targeted by the United States, and the $20 billion plan is to be restarted
I think we can all see that as global demand for smartphones and computer products continues to decline, companies that produce memory chips are under tremendous pressure. Samsung, which has the world's largest market share, recently announced plans to lease high-performance memory chips to ease the pressure. It can be seen that the memory chip giants are not having a good time.
Currently, semiconductors"Hole cards"Only the United States remains.
According to relevant information, the Western Digital Corporation of the United States has restarted the original $20 billion plan. Back in 2021, Western Digital intended to use $20 billion to acquire the Japanese armor company, but the acquisition failed. And recently, Western Digital is interested in merging with the Japanese Pantsir, and both sides are talking about becoming a public company after the merger.
It is not difficult to speculate that the two sides have the idea of merging. For starters, Western Digital itself has a lot of mergers and acquisitions, having previously acquired Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, as well as companies like flash memory makers SanDisk and Toshiba. As a result, the acquisition of Armorman is just one of many mergers and acquisitions for the company. Secondly, in order to increase their own market share, Samsung and SK hynix are unlikely to merge, so it is best to have a Pantsir person with a market share close to its own"Get started"。
Finally, when the storage industry enters the cold winter, under the influence of many factors, the way to survive is to merge, after all, it is likely to be swallowed up by the market environment alone. So I personally think that the 20 billion plan has a chance to start anew. And most importantly, it's not just Western Digital that's very interested, but even the Armored Warriors themselves are very interested in the merger. Obviously, this is a clear mentality on both sides, and only the east wind is owed.
It's just that in this case, I personally believe that the day will come when the semiconductor panic will come.
The reason why I say this is for two reasons: First, Armor Man is currently the only chip manufacturer in Japan that can produce semiconductors in the semiconductor field, and its production technology is in a leading position. In terms of advanced technology, the Armored Man is the only remaining semiconductors in Japan"cards"。If even this advantage is acquired by American companies, the competition between the United States and Japan for semiconductors will become a different situation. In conclusion, I personally believe that the merger of the armored man with Western Digital is not good for the future development of semiconductors.
Second, the reason why the $20 billion acquisition plan was not finalized is also a very important point. It is rumored that due to the difference in valuation, as well as the approval of the relevant authorities, both parties were not sure, resulting in the acquisition not being able to proceed. Coincidentally, the semiconductor company has not expressed any position on the acquisition at present, and in the eyes of professionals, the possibility of a merger between the two parties is very small. If it weren't for the panic over the success of the merger, the Japanese semiconductor industry would still not have taken a stand. At some point, we might think they don't want to do this merger. Of course, they may be waiting for the right moment.
However, if the two companies do merge, Samsung and SK hynix will be surprised, because the combined market share of the two companies will reach 29%, far exceeding Intel's SK hynix's NAND market share, which is not much different from Samsung. It is not difficult to imagine that the probability of this part of the memory chip market will change in the future. What do you think?