Company consolidation seems to be a continuing trend in the PC industry over the last couple of years with the AMD – ATI merger being the most talked about. The industry consolidation trend continues with the announcement that hard drive manufacturer Western Digital has bought the component manufacturer Komag, Inc. The sale, which amounted to $1 billion in cash, will surely create unmistakable ripples in the hard drive sector, which is now facing a sales slump because of aggressive pricing competition among the different companies.

The Komag deal comes a few years after Western Digital bought Read-Rite, a disk drive parts manufacturer that faced bankruptcy. We’ll see if this new acquisition will propel Western Digital towards the top of the hard drive sector, which is currently being occupied by Seagate and Maxtor.