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And if you haven't been keeping track: Kioxia is the holding company for what was Toshiba's flash memory business unit.
I've been to Yokkaichi.
Those fabs are massive:
It's pretty sad that an organization that could accomplish this almost managed to destroy itself over comparatively much simpler errors in the same timeframe.
And in the megaproject construction sector too.
It makes me wonder whether a tiny butterfly effect in some mid 2000s boardroom could have caused the totally opposite outcome, successfully avoiding the troubles with the nuclear business but getting into trouble in the memory business.
Oof. Western Digital gets 51% share of the merged entity, but from an earlier article:
> As of Q1 2023, Kioxia commanded a 21.5% stake in the NAND memory, while Western Digital secured a 15.2% share, according to TrendForce.
So, the company that recently grew a successful business is being acquired by a company whose stock is slightly down (not inflation adjusted) over the last decade.
But WD are still important in spinning disks which for certain markets matter a great deal.
Spinning disks are killing themselves off with the way the prices have barely decreased in 5 years. 8TB has been floating around 150 for a while and it hasn't changed. 4TB SSDs are almost as low as 8TB spinners, now.
Not arguing for them to not exist, but the market is not being supplied with enough with spinners. Hopefully something changes to make it better.
You can get a 20 TB hard drive for under $300.
A 4 TB SSD is about $200.
A better than 3:1 price advantage is still huge for certain use cases.
Most consumers no longer need HDDs. HDDs will be still big for datacenter for decades.
And people have heard of Western Digital. I’ve never heard of Kioxia.
I assume it's a trademark thing when smaller companies get spun out from the mothership, but it's weird how companies are so willing to ditch their fairly reputable brand names. Similar thing happened with Solidigm. A noticeable amount of people aren't comfortable trusting their data to a company that sounds like a Amazon brand generated via Markov chain... but back when they were Intel-branded they were considered top tier.
Part of it is licensing. Spinoffs don't own the main brand's trademark, so they have to pay royalties for its use. Hence many rebrand.
> I’ve never heard of Kioxia.
1) You probably don't buy a lot of raw flash memory. Kioxia sells components, not finished products.
2) Before 2019, they were called Toshiba Memory. You might recognize that name better.
1) They also sell their own made SSD, though it's minor on DIY market. SD card and USB stick too.
Back before The Incident when I was watching Linus Tech Tips, Kioxia was featured in a number of their videos.
> Kioxia and Western Digital Corp. are on the cusp of finalizing their merger, anticipated to be agreed upon as early as this month, according to Kyodo News. This union is poised to make the combined entity the world's largest maker of NAND flash memory.