News "SK Hynix To Buy Intel's NAND Memory Business For $9 Billion" - Anandtech

[UsandThem]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16182/sk-hynix-to-buy-intels-nand-memory-business-for-9-billion

The deal, which values Intel’s NAND holdings at $9 billion, will see the company transfer over the NAND business in two parts, with SK Hynix eventually acquiring all IP, facilities, and personnel related to Intel’s NAND efforts. Notably, however, Intel is not selling their overarching Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group; instead the company will be holding on to their Optane memory technology as they continue to develop and sell that technology.

Intel really was a large player early on with SSDs, but just like their motherboard business, it just became smaller and smaller every year. On SK Hynix's side, they seem like they are finally trying to become a lot more relevant in the retail SSD markets.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Interesting. I didn't see this coming, but in hindsight, Intel's releases of new consumer SSDs were definitely slowing down.

 

[UsandThem]

Yeah, nothing new released in the SATA SSD market for a long time. And even their newest 665P drive was simply a small update to the budget 660P drive. They were such a huge player in that market, and then it seemed like they simply threw in the towel.

Between this news and their well-publicized woes in CPU manufacturing for their next generation products, it seems like they were happy to finally get rid of Brian Krzanich, and try to right the ship.

Just so many uncharastic problems/issues from Intel over the last 3-4 years. However, bad CEOs and their decisions/visions/direction can really hurt a company for many years (e.g. Robert Nardelli, Eddie Lampert, etc.)

 

[UsandThem]

I also found this chart over at Tom's in their article, and thought it was interesting: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-sells-nand-fab-ssd-business-sk-hynix-9-billion-dollars

As shown below (via Trendfocus), Samsung currently dominates the SSD market in both the number of units sold and the total capacity of NAND shipped in exabytes (EB). If SK hynix's purchase of Intel's flash business completed today, SK hynix would have 19.1% of the market unit share, trailing Samsung's 24.6% and WD's 21.2%. Sk hynix would also ship 23.7% of the world's NAND flash capacity, beating WDC but still trailing Samsung's 31.1%

What surprised me the most was Micron's market share, and NAND capacity (I thought they were significantly larger than brands like Kingston, Kioxia, etc).

 

[ao_ika_red]

What surprised me the most was Micron's market share, and NAND capacity (I thought they were significantly larger than brands like Kingston, Kioxia, etc).

Samsung basically owns Enterprise market, meanwhile WD (Sandisk) and Kioxia (Toshiba) are basically joined fabs that supply plenty fabless brands and their own products as well.