WD Currently In Talks With Kioxia On Possible Merger For US$20 Billion

Back in April, news began to surface online that Kioxia Holdings Corp, the Japanese chipmaker, was the subject of a potential acquisition by two storage brands: Western Digital (WD) and Micron Technology. Fast forward to today, and Micron has pulled out from the bid, leaving WD as the only party currently in talks for a potential merger.

According to Reuters, both companies are currently engaged in advanced talks. If an agreement is reached, both companies could be looking at a stock merger worth US$20 billion (~RM83 billion). Additionally, the merger would make a new entity that will be almost as big as Samsung.

As a quick recap, Kioxia was once a part of Toshiba Memory but gained its independence back in 2019. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and global chip shortage, the memory maker has been slowly foundering and forced to seek outside aid to help it out of its dire straits.

Kioxia isn’t the only memory company that has been consolidating its assets. Back in October last year, SK Hynix announced its acquisition of Intel’s own SSD business for US$9 billion (~RM37.7 billion), while Micron itself recently sold off its 3D Xpoint fabrication facility to Texas Instrument (TI), to the sum of US$1.5 billion (~RM6.25 billion).

RTM To Launch TV6 Soon; Currently On Trial Through myFreeview

Some may saw the public broadcaster as a dinosaur given the fact it has been around since 1946 but it seems like the digital era has also provided Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) with more room for growth. In fact, RTM is now gearing up to launch a new TV channel very soon.

Called TV6, the channel has not yet been officially announced by RTM although its existence was acknowledged by the broadcaster’s Twitter account earlier today:

The test transmission of TV6 has been taken place since 1 March on myFreeview through the platform’s channel 113. However, it is not yet available through RTM’s streaming platform, RTMKlik or any other broadcast partners such as Astro and unifi TV.

At this moment, the channel is broadcasting its contents from 7:00 AM to midnight and it is not known for now if RTM has a plan to eventually turn TV6 into a 24-hours channel. Similarly, we also don’t have any idea regarding the actual type of contents that RTM will show through TV6 although the channel is currently showing classic TV series, variety shows, and movies.

TV6 is the fourth dedicated TV channel that the public broadcaster has launched since making the transition to the DTTV era. It has been rumoured that RTM is planning to launch TV6 on 1 April but just to be sure, do stay tuned for further information as we will keep you posted once we received more concrete details regarding the new TV channel.

Microsoft Currently Recruiting Producer For “New Halo Project”

Microsoft recently posted a job ad on its careers page, indicating that it is currently on a recruitment drive for 343 Industries, its video games studio. The company from Redmond is looking for a Producer to work on a yet unspecified Halo project.

The ad itself, sadly, doesn’t reveal any details about the unreleased Halo title but based on the way it is written, it is almost certain that the search for a producer isn’t for them to work on Halo Infinite; that game is already in the final stages of development and is slated to launch either during the third or fourth quarter of the year.

What exactly the untitled Halo project is anyone’s guess at this stage. Again, the job ad is lacking crucial game details and the role description sounds very ambiguous and vague. Given Halo Infinite’s imminent arrival this year, we highly doubt that whatever 343 Industries is working on is even going to make its debut or give a teaser anytime soon.