To compete OCZ branched out into cooling, power supplies, and even graphics cards at one point. It was not a good move for them as their quality started slipping and they missed more than one chance to bring a new (and at the time revolutionary) product to the market. OCZ also made some purchases that were not in their best interest including buying PC Power & Cooling in 2007 and Solid Data in 2010. The PP&C buy never truly paid off for them as the brand was falling out of favor with enthusiasts even at the time of the buy. The Solid Data buy was at a time when OCZ was starting to slip in the market. It was only two months later that OCZ dropped out of the memory market and tried to focus on SSDs/Flash Memory instead.

In early 2012 OCZ was really in trouble, but tried to buy their way out of it by acquiring SANRAD. SANRAD is a Flash maker (although Fabless). It looks like the hope was to build a portfolio that would enable them to be purchased by someone else. One potential buyer was rumored to be Seagate, but that deal never materialized so their financial troubles continued. After this Ryan Petersen resigned as CEO and Alex Mei (chief marketing officer) became CEO until replaced by Ralph Schmitt.

2012 was truly the beginning of the end for OCZ as in addition to their failure to be bought, there were several shareholder lawsuits questioning their accounting practices. OCZ also failed to file an earnings report to the SEC which raised even more concerns. In the end OCZ had to take out a loan to keep the doors open using the company as collateral. They defaulted on the loan and now, despite their best efforts, are declaring bankruptcy.

However, in failure it looks like OCZ finally reached one of the goals they started shooting for back in early 2012: Toshiba has announced that they are looking to buy all of OCZ’s assets through the sale that often happens when a company is dissolved through bankruptcy. The amount of the bid from Toshiba is not known at this time. It is sort of sad to see OCZ go, but the signs were there for a number of years including many failed or severely delayed product launches. The enthusiast computer industry is a rough one and OCZ now joins other companies like DFI, Abit, Soyo, and many others that have either disappeared or been consumed by other companies with the funds to keep going…

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