Apple must be very interested in the outcome of this, and would love to control flash patents, no doubt. The Sandisk partnership agreements with Toshiba might be quite costly to unravel, with current jointly owned fabs and joint product development.

It seems to me there could easily a be a bit of realignment of alliances, with Apple, Sandisk & Toshiba figuring out something that makes everyone happy except Samsung (and Microsoft?). With Omnia, Samsung has just done its best to clone the iPhone, a product made with Samsung chips by one of Samsung's best customer. Apple won't like that, even if the Omnia is initially uncompetitive.

Remember LG Had a phone which Apple IPHONE is a cloneof

The US government may have some input to the eventual ownership of this big storage company - my money would be on Seagate, if only the US gov would back their companies in the same way Korea backs theirs!