OCZ shares jump as Seagate gobble speculation echoes

Reuters is reporting that flash products hustler OCZ may have received a buyout offer from Seagate and its shares are up a fifth.

Reuters quotes an industry blog, Fudzilla, which ran a speculative story about the potential deal and said there was more than one suitor. Micron is identified as one such.

OCZ has grown quickly and has a strong consumer SSD presence and a growing enterprise one with both SSD and PCIe flash products. It has OEM deals and is thought to be a provider for Microsoft in its Azure cloud infrastructure.

Seagate has entered the SSD market in a seemingly lukewarm way but recently bought DensBits, a flash storage controller supplier which is developing the controller software needed to make the latest highest capacity 3-bits per cell flash (TLC) achieve a working life acceptable to business. Currently it's only usable in restricted consumer-class applications.

Apple is working in the same area with its acquired Anobit controller software startup. OCZ has been talking about the imminent arrival of TLC flash as well.

A bid for OCZ would signal Seagate has much stronger ambitions in solid state storage than has been realised, and put the pressure on other suppliers.

OCZ is capitalised at $361.3 million and its shares are up 17.3 per cent today to $5.35. Fudzilla said OCZ wouldn't comment. We've asked Seagate, expecting the same response, and got it:

"Seagate does not comment on this kind of speculation." ®