Samsung is in talks with leading memory card manufacturer Sandisk over a possible acquisition.
The acquisition would see Samsung own the world’s biggest memory card manufacturer, and would remove the reported figure of £250m per year that Samsung reportedly pays in royalty fees to Sandisk – an amount that is thought to be a bone of contention between the two companies.
California-based Sandisk provides its memory readers to all of Samsung’s rival manufacturers as well as to the open market, and has a market value of $3bn (£1.5bn).
LG, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola all use SanDisk memory cards in their devices. SanDisk also works closely with Samsung’s electronics rival Toshiba.
Samsung has worked closely with Sandisk in recent years; it supplies electronic chips for Sandisk’s storage cards, although Toshiba currently supplies Sandisk with more chips than Samsung.
Derek Williamson, Samsung’s UK general manager, told Mobile: ‘As yet there is nothing concrete. We are considering various opportunities, but nothing has been decided yet.
‘We are the world’s largest maker of computer memory chips and, as a progressive company, we will always be on the lookout for growth opportunities.’