In a short press release, LaCie, the well-known company for its external storage solutions associating design and performance, announced to have signed an agreement to acquire the Swiss company Caleido, specialized in secured online storage solutions. The operation should be completed during Q2 2009.
If the company did not officially unveil the reasons behind such acquisition, one can think that in the future customers purchasing a LaCie storage unit might have the opportunity to get free or fee-based accessed to an online HD space.
Manufacturers of external storage solutions are facing several challenges, beyond competition on this market. Indeed, most HD manufacturers started to offer their own external solutions such as models from WD or Seagate; they also try to keep the exclusivity of their new large capacity HD as long as possible. So, by offering an online bundle offer to its external storage solutions, LaCie would bring the extra bonus value for its products, in addition to its historical support to the Mac platform.
