Samsung Electronics is keeping an eye on SanDisk's dilemma. As memory card technology goes down, Samsung might just be waiting for the right time before it acquires the Korean company.
Samsung is staying alert as situations unfold for Korea's SanDisk memory card makers. The card maker recently chose an investment bank to dispose all of its assets. Western Digital, Seagate, Tsinghua Unigroup, and Micron Technology are all showing interests in the card maker's assets. .
Samsung was also among the tech giants that showed interest in SanDisk's stocks, but have reached the conclusion that this deal would not generate much profit for the company. The decision was attributed to its certainty that it would not create much impact for the company.
Aside from smartphones, Samsung is also known for its solid state drives. This technology is an advantage in terms of performance and productivity outputs compared to memory cards, as it can utilize its triple-level cell system known on its SSDs.
Since USB flash drives have taken an uproar in the storage category, the competitiveness of SanDisk in bout built-in and detachable memory category has been going down. Dominating the UFS category would be SK Hynix and Samsung. Both companies' technology on storage systems are more profitable than those of SanDisk's embedded SDs and MMCs.
The impact of UFS in built-in mobile memory category is low, but is expected to increase from 37 percent to 49 percent by 2019. The only thing that Samsung was unsuccessful for in acquiring SanDisk was pricing.
SanDisk tried to acquire a U.S. memory card company for US$5.85 billion, and after successfully acquiring it, the company had an unfortunate upset on its stocks. In this predicament, Samsung made an effort to buy out the U.S. company that SanDisk acquired for a cheaper price. However, the Korean card company opposed this deal and resulted in a breakdown.
The assets of SanDisk are still up for grabs. The Korean company still has its advantage in the memory card business and deals are expected to generate high premiums.
