STEC history

In 1994, Simple Technology bought Cirrus Logic’s flash controller operation, to enter the flash memory business for consumer electronic devices.

Before Apple success of using this technology in the iPod Shuffle and the iPod Nano but much prior to that Rio released its PMP300 way back in 1998, which got you 32MB of storage for $200.

Simple Technology became a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ stock exchange on September 26, 2000, under the ticker symbol of STEC.

The company shortened its name to SimpleTech in 2001.

The SimpleShare consumer network attached storage device was announced in November 2004.

Till 2005, it was available in the form of external storage but Flash storage made its appearance for internal storage in consumer electronics but not in computers.

In 2006, SimpleTech announced its first portable external hard drive designed by Pininfarina.

In early 2007, the company sold the SimpleTech consumer division to Fabrik Inc. (a company funded and founded by Keyur Patel, Anaal Udaybabu along with Mike Cordano) for $43 million in cash.

Fabrik continued to develop and market products under the SimpleTech brand including the Joggle.com website and the environmentally friendly [re]drive introduced in 2008.

Fabrik was acquired by Hitachi in 2009 for an estimated $950 million.

In April 2011, sTec announced it acquired the assets of Knowledge Quest Infotech Private Limited in Pune, India.

In September 2012, Mark Moshayedi was named sTec chief executive officer.

On June 24, 2013, Western Digital corporation announced sTec would become part of its HGST subsidiary, with a purchase price estimated at $340 million.