U.S.-based Seagate Technology's $1.4 billion acquisition of Samsung Electronics Co's loss-making hard disk drive (HDD) business pits it head-to-head with Western Digital Corp in an industry that has been dogged by price wars. The sector is battling persistent sales growth declines and faces a longer-term threat from wireless tablet devices such as Apple's iPad that use more power-efficient flash drives, or solid-state drives (SSD). Both Seagate and Western Digital have been struggling to adapt to a future where fewer consumers have laptops and many view flash drive as the future of the disk drive industry. The bigger hard disk drive makers are also looking to enter the flash drive arena.
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