OWC Acquires Popular Thunderbolt 3 Accessory Maker Akitio

Thursday January 3, 2019 7:36 AM PST by Eric Slivka
Longtime Mac accessory vendor OWC today announced that it has acquired Akitio, maker of popular professional-level external storage solutions focused on Thunderbolt 3. Akitio also offers a number of other Thunderbolt 3 accessories including docks, eGPU boxes, and more.

"This acquisition gives us the opportunity to strengthen our core prosumer lineup and market reach with photography, video and music pros with some really exceptional new offerings," said Larry O'Connor, OWC Founder & CEO. "Our product lines and brands are quite complementary, with Akitio bringing a strong reputation in the Windows space and segments like performance gaming, AR/VR, high-end creative strengths to our base. I see tremendous opportunities ahead for our team and our customers."
While Akitio joins OWC's other brands at OWC's Illinois headquarters, Akitio's teams in California and internationally will remain at their current locations and all customer support and warranty obligations will be honored without interruption.

Tags: OWC, Akitio
30 comments

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StellarVixen
11 months ago
Ewwww, I am not glad for this. Akitio was the most affordable manufacturer of TB3 stuff, I am afraid that affordability is gone now...
Rating: 11 Votes
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AMP12345
11 months ago
Maybe I'm slowly becoming a grumpy old man who doesn't like change, but this makes me nervous. I've always had a great experience with Akitio and I'm just not sure OWC can keep that up. Maybe... but only time will tell.
Rating: 4 Votes
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monokakata
11 months ago
I wonder how much difference this will make, really. It was clear to me that the OWC TB enclosures were really Akitio, rebranded. I've had the 4 bay TB2 model, and the 4 bay TB3 model. The TB3 model is identical physically, but of course I don't know whether the firmware is the same or not.
Rating: 3 Votes
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macduke
11 months ago

Maybe I'm slowly becoming a grumpy old man who doesn't like change, but this makes me nervous. I've always had a great experience with Akitio and I'm just not sure OWC can keep that up. Maybe... but only time will tell.

Well, I don't have a lot of experience with OWC aside from some RAM which always worked, but in the past I looked all over and bought several USB 3.0 to eSATA controllers for some G-Drives that I had and all of them sucked until I bought the one from OWC which worked amazingly well. So, uh, that's something.
Rating: 3 Votes
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Anarchy99
11 months ago
Akitio is awesome they have been the most affordable for thunderbolt exclosures since prior to TB3 and apple's official support.

OWC are fine for mac accessories but overpriced

bad mix, this is the worst Tech news of 2019 so far. :(
Rating: 3 Votes
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keysofanxiety
11 months ago
OWC = Other Worldly Currency

Now these new accessories will cost an arm and a leg. Possibly your first-born too, depending if you take out the extended warranty.
Rating: 3 Votes
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Anarchy99
11 months ago

Ah, good to know. But surely you still have tax/duties on arrival with these companies?


depends
as a canadian i usually reship USPS because it gets handed off to your local postal in my case canadapost in his case royalpost?

canadapost rarely charges duties or tax when they do its based on declared value (you fill out the form and could lie if you wanted)
usually i don't lie, with canada there is no duty on technology so worse case i'd have to pay tax for anything valued over $20 (soon to be $800? thanks USMCA) but once again thats only if they choose to tax me.

id say maybe 1 out of 20 or so packages in the last few years have they bothered to tax, most things i buy have no duty.
considering usually i don't get taxed and if this wasn't possible i'd always get taxed i just chalk it up as a win most of the time and the times i do get taxed on it often its still cheaper to pay the taxes on it coming from there than the canadian price plus tax up here
Rating: 2 Votes
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cube
11 months ago


Yeah, I thought both OWC and Akitio brands just bought the same enclosures from some OEM supplier and each rebadged them?

Until now, Akitio has been inXtron's American retail brand.
Rating: 2 Votes
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mmomega
11 months ago
Well Fuuuuuuuuuuuudge.
Rating: 2 Votes
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manu chao
11 months ago

I wonder how much difference this will make, really. It was clear to me that the OWC TB enclosures were really Akitio, rebranded. I've had the 4 bay TB2 model, and the 4 bay TB3 model. The TB3 model is identical physically, but of course I don't know whether the firmware is the same or not.

Doesn't quite look that way to me:


Akito Thunder3 Quad X ('https://www.akitio.com/desktop-storage/thunder3-quad-x'): $379
OWC Thunderbay 4 (w/ TB3) ('https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3IVKIT0GB/'): $399

(Admittedly, that OWC price is a price reduction from originally $449.99.)
Rating: 2 Votes
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