want SSD
Price of SSDs are coming down. Quite frankly I wish I never have to use another conventional hard drive again.
Could China become a major hard disk manufacturing base if Great Wall snaps up a slice of Western Digital's 3.5-inch drive business? WD is trying to buy Hitachi GST, but EU and Chinese regulators said the sale would limit competition in the HDD market - unless WD sells off some of its 3.5-inch disk fab capacity in amelioration …
Irrespective of how these mergers turn out, the narrowing of the storage/HD market should be viewed with considerable concern.
We've already seen what kind of a monster was created as a result of a monopoly in the operating system market. We certainly don't need a repeat performance.
"Chinese regulators said the sale would limit competition in the HDD market - unless WD sells off some of its 3.5-inch disk fab capacity in amelioration"
Definition of AMELIORATE: transitive verb: to make better or more tolerable
To make better for whom????? China? All so some PHB can get his/her bonus by selling more product in China, what could possibly go wong (no it's not a typo).
Chris,
You hit the nail on the head, we need to offshore the jobs (directly to HELL) of the regulators that want to create even MORE Chinese competitors and ruin more good paying "middle class" jobs. Even a painful death is not enough punishment for these "regulators".
How about we go the other way for at least 20 years.
If a Chinese/Indian/Korean/Taiwan/Vietnamese/Etc manufacturer want to sell it's product in a Western Country, then they must have 51% of the manufacturing (by Weight) performed in that country (at local median wages & benefits) or pay a permanent tax that will pay 150% of the unemployment benefits for the people who lost their jobs due to outsourcing of the manufacturing jobs.
we need more taxes and duties and unemployment benefits, so average imported laptop costs 2000 euro in EU and 400 outside. That will solve it all. Normal people dont need computers anyway. And if they want some they can always buy it on black market. Why buying in shop with garantee and all if you can get it of van in parking lot. Everybody will be better off.
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to see another major player emerge in the extremely oligopolistic HDD market. But of course, to those who allow their dislike of China to override every other concern - and who ignore such facts that (essential components for) most HDDs are presently made in that bastion of freedom and democracy, not to say equitable labour relations, Thailand (which is one of the reasons that the floods in that country had such an effect on prices), rather than in, say, our lovely and o-so-democratic Europe - this is really bad news....
Henri