It appears that Seagate is quite sensitive to any suggestion that they have been approached by a Chinese firm reportedly interested in buying Seagate. According to various reports that were said to have appeared in the New York Times, Chief Executive William Watkins was said to have indicated in an interview that a Chinese technology firm had made an overture to Seagate.

Seagate issued a public statement saying that what Watkins was expressing is that there was a growing interest in the disk drive technology business from firms in China, Japan, and Korea which have made disk storage a national agenda. Seagate was clear in the statement saying “Just to be clear, Seagate has not received such an offer and we are not trying to sell the company”.

Seagate is the largest among the hard drive disk manufacturers after buying Maxtor. The nearest competition is from rival, Western Digital, who recently attempted to firm up their position by buying Komag earlier this year. While hard disk drive profits have been on razor thin margins as of late, many analysts are suggesting that due to all of the hard drives that will be sold in the fourth quarter of this year in consumer electronics devices, hard drive makers could see some rebound in their profit margins.

The consumer electronics market has become quite a battle ground for hard drive manufacturers as of late because of devices such as DVRs and gaming consoles that are using hard drives. Hard drive manufacturers have been waiting for this market to become more lucrative and all of the development of hard drives targeted for this market space is finally paying off. While it is said that the consumer electronics market for hard drive will never surpass the traditional computer market for hard drives, it is finally starting to do the kind of volume that hard drive manufactures have been waiting for.

Read more here.