Samsung launched a hostile bid for Sandisk by putting on the table 5.8 billion dollars. As always in this kind of case, Sandisk announced that this offer is under evaluation their company. But the shareholders will probably have difficulty resisting this offer, since Sandisk has announced rather poor figures in a market based on the very depressed flash memory.
Samsung, in making this offer, is trying to get the knowledge connected with memory controllers, but also to obtain a famous trademark which would enable them to sell their excess flash memory directly.
In the medium term with the emergence of the SSD market, Samsung could easily make a profit from this purchase. The other interest with this offer will be to prevent Seagate from putting its hands on Sandisk thus slowing down its arrival onto the SSD market in a considerable way.
[translation by crispin]
