Toshiba, Fujitsu in talks over disk businesses

Toshiba and Fujitsu broke their silence on Thursday and acknowledged they were in talks about the future of their disk-drive businesses, but would not confirm whether they were discussing combining the two businesses into a single operation.

After two days of media speculation about the future of the Japanese firms' storage activities and how they might be combined, Toshiba issued a statement on Thursday, which said that "while the companies involved are in negotiations, nothing has been decided yet".

Conjecture in the media about the possibility of a transaction taking place between the two companies and involving their hard-drive businesses was "not based on any announcement by Toshiba", the statement said.

A merger between the two companies would create the largest manufacturer of small-format, hard disk drives in the world. Speculation has focused on whether Toshiba would take over Fujitsu's disk business completely or whether the two companies would work closely together and combine product lines.

Both Toshiba and Fujitsu manufacture 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard disk drives, and competitors include Seagate and Hitachi.