In a bid to boost both consumer and cloud storage businesses Seagate buys 65% of France-based LaCie, in a deal that values LaCie at around $186 million.
LaCie consumer and SMB storage products include USB HDDs, NAS, RAID appliances and optical appliances. It also has a cloud storage service (Wuala) and a strong presence in Apple-related storage.
The transaction would combine two highly complementary product and technology portfolios, adding LaCie's line of premium branded consumer storage solutions, network-attached storage solutions and software offerings to Seagate's array of mainstream consumer storage products.
The combination would accelerate Seagate's growth strategy in the expanding consumer storage market, particularly in Europe and Japan, and add strong engineering and software development capabilities, as well as relationships with several key retailers.
LaCie chairman and CEO Philippe Spruch will join Seagate, where he will lead the company's consumer storage business.