Toshiba picks Bain consortium as winner for its memory unit, likely backed by Apple

Toshiba on Wednesday announced an $18 billion agreement to sell its memory chip business to a group of companies led by U.S. equity firm Bain Capital, one prominent backer likely being Apple.

Toshiba apparently swung away from a deal with joint venture partner Western Digital within a matter of hours, according to Reuters. Indeed the company said that a deal could still be blocked by WD, which has challenged Toshiba's right to sell to other firms given involvement in a major factory.

Some other parties in the Bain consortium are believed to include Apple and Dell. Apple in particular could be contributing $3 billion, which wouldn't be a controlling stake, but enough to exert influence. Some reports have suggested that Apple was prepared to back any of three bidders to ensure its participation.

Apple is critically dependent on memory supply, being not only one of the world's biggest electronics makers, but often unable to cope with demand when it launches new products — especially iPhones.

Exacerbating the situation is an ongoing NAND memory shortage, which is thought to be why Apple hiked the prices for 256- and 512-gigabyte iPad Pro models. That might also help explain why the iPhone 8 starts at $699, rather than the $649 mark iPhones maintained for years — though other technologies like wireless charging are likely a factor.

8 Comments

mdriftmeyer 7395 comments · 20 Years

About 7 years ago

Not likely backed. The only way they win is Apple ponies up the biggest portion.

gatorguy 24609 comments · 13 Years

mdriftmeyer said:

Not likely backed. The only way they win is Apple ponies up the biggest portion.

$3B buys Apple 16% of Toshiba according to reports. Other investors have greater control.

melgross 33607 comments · 20 Years

This consortium will have, at the end of the day, with or without Apple, 49%. Toshiba will retain 40%, and other Japanese companies will have the last 11%. That way the control will remain in Japanese hands, which is what the government demanded of any deal.

appex 670 comments · 11 Years

Nope. Apple should be FREE o choose best SSD available when needed, that now is Samsung V-NAND, hands down, like the Samsung 960 Pro. Check out specifications with massive sequential R/W (read/write) speeds up to 3,500/2,100 MB/s and random R/W speeds up to 440/360K IOPS, respectively http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/960pro.html

appex said:

Nope. Apple should be FREE o choose best SSD available when needed, that now is Samsung V-NAND, hands down, like the Samsung 960 Pro. Check out specifications with massive sequential R/W (read/write) speeds up to 3,500/2,100 MB/s and random R/W speeds up to 440/360K IOPS, respectively http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/960pro.html

Theybwill still be free. Samsung’s drives have been better because of the controllers more than the NAND itself. And Apple needs a second, reliable, source for memory. in addition, Apple has, and still does use a lot of Toshiba memory. That’s one reason they want in here.