OCZ Files for Bankruptcy - Toshiba Offers to Buy the Assets
by Kristian Vättö on November 27, 2013 3:30 PM EST
OCZ has just issued a press release announcing their filing for bankruptcy, which was expected since Nasdaq had halted the trading of OCZ stock earlier today. OCZ has had financial issues for quite a long time and it was just a matter of time before the inevitable happened. While OCZ did try to change its course by reforming their product portfolio when Ryan Petersen, the former CEO of OCZ, stepped down, it seems that the efforts weren't enough to make the business profitable.
OCZ leaves behind a noticeable amount of assets, most importantly its engineering teams in California, South Korea and Great Britain thanks to the prior acquisitions of PLX and Indilinx. Toshiba has already offered to buy OCZ's assets but currently there is no certainty on whether the deal will be completed. Toshiba's offer is, as expected, subject to various conditions such as retention of the employees because it obviously makes no sense to buy the assets unless Toshiba also gets the immaterial capital that is integrated into the employees. We'll have to wait and see how the deal turns out but at this point I recommend not buying any OCZ products because there is no guarantee that warranties will be honored.
It's sad to see OCZ going because they've been one of the pioneers in the consumer SSD industry. They were one of the most active companies when we started to see the first consumer SSDs in 2008/2009 but OCZ lost a ton of sales once Samsung and other major OEMs began to take the consumer SSD market seriously. It's hard to say what ultimately killed OCZ without knowing their exact cost structure but I believe it was a combination of bad strategy (too many products and high production volumes) and engineering choices (low reliability) along with other things.
What happens to OCZ now depends on the completion of the Toshiba deal. Even if Toshiba completes the purchase of OCZ's assets, I doubt we'll see the OCZ brand anymore. OCZ's brand image took a hit with the low reliability, so I doubt Toshiba will see the OCZ brand adding any value to its products. I do hope that the deal goes through because OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot 3 platform has a lot of potential and it would be lamentable to see all that hard work to be flushed down the toilet.
Source: Nasdaq
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klmccaughey - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
Sad day. They always went above and beyond to help, really did shake up the consumer flash market (on price too) and were a thoroughly nice bunch of guys with a dream, trying extra hard to make it happen.I have two OCZ Vertex 3's in Raid 0 for my main C drive and never, not once, had an issue. I think it has been nearly two years now as well.
klmccaughey - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
OR Vertex 2's?3ogdy - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
Well,I am one of those who contributed to this. Ever since I understood OCZ's ideology("to hell with reliabilty,we just want awesome performance numbers") I constantly avoided their products and always replaced any OCZ SSD in systems I configure on the Internet.I'm both glad and sorry they ended up like this. I'm glad because they deserved it,given how awful a lot of their products were. I'm sorry because there's less competition in the market.
Kiste - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
My second (!) replacement Vertex 2 died a few months ago, so that's a total 3 of these pieces of crap that died on me. Good riddance, OCZ. You won't be missed.Arnulf - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
"It's hard to say what ultimately killed OCZ"No it's not; their shoddy products is what killed them. I was stupid enough to buy their SSD and PSU. Once that SSD died about 40 days after the purchase I fortunately got a full refund from the store (which went towards the purchase of Samsung's 830 series SSD), and as for the "ModXStream pro" PSU I had to take that damn thing apart and stick some bits under the plastic foil that covers section of the exhaust just to get rid of the unbearable noise, because some idiot thought this noise would be a great design feature.
I wowed to never buy another OCZ product again and it appears that this manifested sooner (and in a different way) than I ever imagined :-)
Good riddance OCZ, you will not be missed!
MrCommunistGen - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
As soon as I heard the announcement I started to wonder who'd buy them... or rather, who'd buy their IP.DarkStryke - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
Who will AT.com cheer-lead for with ocz gone?Animebando - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
I must be the only person to have owned desktop memory and a few different ssd from OCZ and have had zero issues. Ever.ExarKun333 - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
Apparently folks here are too young too remember. Platinum rev. 2 DDR RAM from OCZ was the gold standard for years. They made some pretty awesome high-voltage DDR stuff too. Those were the days...BillB0B - Friday, November 29, 2013 - link
OCZ has been trying to get loans to stay afloat for the last several months. There was some problem with there last CEO. That why it pay to use forum like this and other before you spent your hard earned money. There 3 and 5 year warrant don't mean much once they filed bankruptcy.