Samsung has sold off its printer business to fellow manufacturer HP in a deal worth around £760 million.
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Samsung’s printer business also brings a compelling intellectual property portfolio of more than 6,500 printing patents and a world-class workforce that includes almost 1,300 researchers and engineers with advanced expertise in laser printer technology, imaging electronics, and printer supplies and accessories to support continued innovation in print market solutions.
HP Inc. believes the big-money acquisition of Samsung’s printer business will allow it to take control of the potentially lucrative professional and office printing market.
Samsung Electronics will sell its printer business to U.S. computer maker HP, the companies said today, as the South Korean giant accelerates restructuring efforts amid a generational power transfer in the founding Lee family.
HP said Monday that it is the largest print acquisition in the company’s history and will help it go from traditional copiers to multifunction printers.
Samsung’s printer business employs around 6000 people across 50 sales offices globally, and brought in 2 trillion Korean won (A$2.4 billion) in revenue a year ago.
“We’ve been working with Samsung to build this portfolio during the past year and when we saw the power of the technology we had, we realized that it was a technology we wanted to own”, said Enrique Lores, president of the imaging and print solutions at HP.
“HP Inc. has been a valued partner and customer of Samsung”. Samsung, on the other hand, has enjoyed considerable success with a range of large-format multi-function printers (MFPs), and it’s these – plus a 6,500-strong portolio of related patents – that forms the central target of HP’s acquisition. Canon and HP said their existing partnership will continue, however.
“HP and Canon have long discussed print innovation to create customer value in business printing and in the growing MPS market”. “This transaction will further evolve our collaboration and bring about growth for both of our companies”.
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“The complexity of traditional copiers makes fix and maintenance too inefficient for our partners and customers”, added Lores. “This is what we mean by reinventing printing”, Lores told the audience. Then the A3 & Copier segment within which HP has around 5% global market share. Samsung employees, including sales, manufacturing and research and development divisions, will join HP, except for the human resource division.
