Brussels, 05/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 4 February, the European Commission gave the go-ahead to the planned acquisition of data storage manufacturer SanDisk by rival Western Digital, both of the US, after investigating the flash memory storage solutions market, particularly for hard disk drives or solid state drives based on flash memory used by companies.
Despite the merged entity's relatively high combined market share, the Commission says the deal does not raise competition concerns as strong and established players such as Intel, Toshiba, Micron and Samsung are active on the market and will continue to exert competitive pressure on the merged entity.
The Commission also investigated the vertical link between SanDisk's activities in the production of flash memory and the downstream markets for enterprise flash memory storage solutions. It concluded that the merged entity would be unable to shut out competitors from access to flash memory and that competing producers of flash memory would still have a sufficient customer base. This is because SanDisk's presence on the upstream market for flash memory manufacturing is limited and several competitors will remain active in the production of flash memory, solid state drives and other flash memory storage solutions. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)