Western Digital enters solid-state drive market

Since its inception in 2002, SiliconSystems has sold millions of SiliconDrive products for the network-communications, industrial, embedded-computing, medical, military and aerospace markets.

These markets accounted for approximately one third of worldwide solid-state drive revenues in 2008.

"We are delighted to have the SiliconSystems team join WD," said John Coyne, president and CEO of WD.

"The combination will be modestly accretive to revenue and margins as a result of SiliconSystems' existing position as a trusted supplier to the well-established US$400 million market for embedded solid-state drives.

"SiliconSystems' intellectual property and technical expertise will significantly accelerate WD's solid-state drive development programs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, providing greater choice for our customers to satisfy all their storage requirements," he added.

WD's storage industry, infrastructure, and technical and financial resources will enable further growth in SiliconSystems' existing markets and customer relationships.

Integration into WD begins immediately, with SiliconSystems becoming known as the WD Solid-State Storage business unit.

This will complement WD's existing Branded Products, Client Storage, Consumer Storage and Enterprise Storage business units.

"WD's strong balance sheet, sales reach, and operations and logistics capabilities will allow us to greatly accelerate our penetration of our existing markets," said Michael Hajeck, a founder and CEO of SiliconSystems, now senior vice president and general manager of WD's Solid-State Storage business unit.

"Combining our engineering expertise with WD will enable us to develop new solid-state drives to broaden our overall product portfolio and address the emerging applications for solid-state storage in WD's existing customer base.

"We are extremely excited to be joining WD and enabling an even stronger future for our talented team."