By Sam Mamudi, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is pondering a sale of its loss-making hard disk drive unit, according to a media report Sunday.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported that South Korea’s Samsung SSNLF -46.02% is hoping to raise about $1.5 billion in the sale, though it may settle for less than $1 billion to rid itself of the business
A sale would in part help the company invest for growth in other areas, said the paper. Samsung officials did not return calls seeking comment for the story.
The Journal claimed that the most likely bidder for the hard disk drive division would be Seagate Technology PLCSTX -1.53% .
The Samsung conglomerate said last May that it would invest $20 billion in new business by 2020, said the Journal. In February, Samsung Electronics announced a joint venture with U.S.-based biopharmaceutical firm Quintiles Transnational Corp., part of an attempt to move away from its core business of consumer electronics.
The paper added that the hard-disk drive industry has been under pressure recently from the success of tablet computers such as Apple Inc’s AAPL +0.47% iPad. Those devices use flash-memory chips rather than magnetic disks commonly found in laptop computers.
Last month, Hitachi Ltd. HIT -0.95% sold its hard-disk unit to Western Digital Corp.WDC -0.18% for roughly $4.3 billion.
Sam Mamudi is a reporter for MarketWatch, based in New York
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