HP Inc. to buy Samsung Electronics’ Printer Business
Anne ValaitisSep 12, 2016
HP Inc. announced today they are set to buy Samsung’s printer business for a reported $1.05 billion. HP Inc. went public with a number of announcements today during their Global Partner Conference in Boston, Ma continuing for the next few days. As part of the Samsung announcement, HP is set to gain about 6,000 Samsung employees once the deal is finalized. HP sets its expectation to close within 12 months (according to Enrique Lores HP, president of imaging and printing). Of the 6,000 employees, approximately 2,000 are research and development engineers, 1,000 are sales and support staff and the remaining are in service and manufacturing, Lores said. As of this writing, Samsung has not shared the revenue that had been generated from their printing business.
In addition to the acquisition announcement, HP Inc., announced today their next generation A3 printing portfolio aimed at disrupting the $55B copier segment with 6 new next generation Pagewide and LaserJet platforms.
InfoTrends will work to develop a detailed analysis piece to be published in the coming days as more information is gathered and the HP Global Partner Event concludes.
Samsung is said to be divesting the printer business as a means to focus on its core smartphone, television and memory chip businesses. HP will grow, with this acquisition, in areas such as Asia and will gain intellectual property such as a patent portfolio that includes approximately 6500 printing technology patents. In addition the obvious nature of eliminating a rival cannot be dismissed in what is a very competitive market that has had its share of challenges.
Dion Weisler, President and CEO of HP Inc. was emphatic in today’s Global Partner Conference presentation webinar that HP and the industry in which is competes must innovate, and change “…in order to grow, we must embrace change…keep reinventing everyday…” Dion was also joined by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft who echoed many of same sentiments regarding change and innovation. Satya stated that we need to look differently at IT, “IT is not an enabler of office work, it is at the core of business…” In addition they both agreed that the industry has been lacking innovation with too much emphasis on a single product or area “…no longer can you over index on just the software, or just the hardware…”.
We look to share more information, insights and predictions to the ramifications of the HP Inc acquisition of the Samsung printing business in the next few business days.
