Western Digital Corp. today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Viviti Technologies Ltd. (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), effective Mar. 8, 2012, for $3.9 billion in cash and 25 million shares of WDC common stock valued at approximately $0.9 billion. Hitachi, Ltd. now owns approximately 10 percent of WDC shares outstanding, and it has the right to designate two individuals to the board of directors of WD.

The new WD will operate with WD Technologies (WD) and HGST as wholly owned subsidiaries. Aggregated revenues of the two companies in 2011 were $15 billion. As chief executive officer of WD, John Coyne heads up the new office of the CEO, with Steve Milligan as president, Tim Leyden as chief operating officer and Wolfgang Nickl as chief financial officer.

Photronics, Inc., a worldwide leader in supplying innovative imaging technology solutions for the global electronics industry, announced today that it paid approximately $35 million to Micron Technology, Inc. ("Micron") in connection with the purchase of its U.S. nanoFab building in Boise, ID that it previously leased from the building's owner Micron. In connection therewith, the Company also amended its credit facility adding a 5-year term loan for $25 million and reducing interest rates by 25 basis points on borrowings as defined in the credit facility.

As a result of the purchase, Photronics' operating lease with Micron for the nanoFab facility has been cancelled. This reduced the Company's related outstanding operating lease commitments by a total of $15 million for fiscal years 2013 and 2014. Accordingly, as a result of this transaction, beginning in fiscal year 2013, the Company's net cash flow will improve by approximately $5 million annually and its expenses will be reduced by approximately $5 million annually.

PMC-Sierra, Inc., or PMC, the semiconductor innovator transforming storage, optical and mobile networks today announced the Company has acquired Maxim Integrated Products, Inc.'s 12 Gb/s SAS expander technology. PMC expects the acquisition will strengthen its SAS design footprint with leading server OEMs.

Combined with PMC's 12 Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (RoC) products, Maxim's expander technology enables PMC to offer end-to-end 12 Gb/s SAS solutions tailored for server platforms. Continued support for Maxim's industry-leading server expander firmware will preserve OEM investment as they transition from 6 Gb/s SAS to 12 Gb/s SAS.

AMD today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SeaMicro, a pioneer in energy-efficient, high-bandwidth microservers, for approximately $334 million, of which approximately $281 million will be paid in cash. Through the acquisition of SeaMicro, AMD will be accelerating its strategy to deliver disruptive server technology to its OEM customers serving Cloud-centric data centers. With SeaMicro's fabric technology and system-level design capabilities, AMD will be uniquely positioned to offer industry-leading server building blocks tuned for the fastest-growing workloads such as dynamic web content, social networking, search and video.

AMD's server technology combined with SeaMicro technology provides customers with a range of processor choices and platforms that can help significantly reduce data center complexity, cost and energy consumption while improving performance. AMD plans to offer the first AMD Opteron processor-based solutions that combine AMD and SeaMicro technology in the second half of 2012. The company remains firmly committed to its traditional server business, and will continue to focus and invest in this area.

Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Western Digital Corporation (NYSE: WDC) on Toshiba's acquisition of certain of Western Digital's 3.5-inch HDD manufacturing equipment and related intellectual property, and the transfer to Western Digital of Toshiba Storage Device (Thailand) Co., Ltd. (TSDT), Toshiba's wholly-owned HDD manufacturing subsidiary located in Thailand.

Toshiba and Western Digital aim to complete the acquisition and transfer by March of this year after obtaining approval from the relevant authorities. Under the agreement, Toshiba will acquire the following equipment and intellectual property from Western Digital.

• Manufacturing equipment for 3.5-inch HDDs for use in desktop PCs and other consumer applications, plus related intellectual property; and
• Manufacturing equipment for near-line HDDs for server applications.

Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today reported that it has reached an agreement with Toshiba Corporation to divest certain assets to address the requirements of regulatory agencies that have conditionally approved or are continuing to review the company's planned acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST). The asset package covered by the agreement will enable Toshiba to manufacture and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for the desktop and consumer electronics markets and will enhance its ability to manufacture and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for near-line (business critical) applications. The divestiture transaction is subject to review by regulatory agencies in certain jurisdictions.

WD also reported that it has agreed, subject to completion of the divestiture transaction, to purchase Toshiba Storage Device (Thailand) Company Limited (TSDT). TSDT manufactured hard drives but has not resumed operations after the recent Thailand flooding. The principal assets of TSDT are its Thailand property, facilities and employees. Subject to completion of the transaction, WD plans to integrate these facilities and employees into its Thailand operations. The financial terms of the two agreements were not disclosed.

Dell Inc. today announced it has acquired AppAssure, a global leader in complete application protection for virtual, physical and cloud infrastructures. The acquisition of AppAssure, the nation's fastest-growing backup software technology company, further extends Dell's comprehensive storage and software strategy.

Dell has taken significant steps over the past three years to expand its storage portfolio to offer customers a complete range of world-class storage products and solutions. AppAssure's leading backup solutions enhance Dell's existing storage capabilities by providing customers confidence that their applications and data are fully protected.

US-based chip manufacturer GLOBALFOUNDRIES is said to be planning on getting itself a fab in the home country of arch-rival TSMC (Taiwan). This would be done through the acquisition, for NT$20 - 30 billion (US$ 506 - 760 million), of (troubled and soon to be delisted) DRAM company ProMOS Technologies who owns a 300 mm plant at Taichung.

By snatching up ProMOS, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is expected to have a better chance of getting contracted by companies (in Taiwan and China) currently working with TSMC or UMC.

ProMOS' Taichung fab has a production capacity of 60,000 wafers per month and that would add to the 130,000 wafers/month from GLOBALFOUNDRIES' facilities in Germany and Singapore.

Opera Software announced today that it has acquired Mobile Theory Inc. and 4th Screen Advertising, Ltd., to significantly expand its offering to advertisers and mobile publishers that engage consumers via the mobile web and applications, across all mobile platforms. Opera offers complete advertising solutions for mass-market feature phone and smartphone platforms, including iOS, Android, Blackberry, Java and Symbian.

Additionally, these acquisitions will enable Opera to better monetize the traffic that flows through Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers. With the world's most popular mobile browser, Opera serves more than 160 million monthly active users that generate more than 100 billion page views, and consume more than 16 Petabytes of mobile data services a month, as of December 2011.