Slashdot Mirror
HP To Buy Samsung's Printer Business For $1.05 Billion (usatoday.com)
HP has agreed to a deal with Samsung to acquire their printer business for $1.05 billion, a deal that will be the largest print acquisition in HP's history. USA Today reports: "The acquisition of Samsung's printer business allows us to deliver print innovation and create entirely new business opportunities with far better efficiency, security, and economics for customers," said HP president and CEO Dion Weisler in a statement. The Samsung deal would give HP access to 6,500 printing patents as well as 1,300 researchers and engineers "with advanced expertise in laser printer technology." While this deal is being negotiated, Samsung's mobile phone business has been navigating a recall of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones over issues with batteries catching fire and exploding. One of the most recent accidents reported involved a six-year-old boy in New York, who was using the device when it "suddenly burst into flames."
I doubt there is much more connection between Samsung's printer and cell phone divisions than there is between their printer and guided missile destroyer units.
sPh
Terrible printers, last I checked. I went around at a trade show a few years ago to look at laser printers, and the Samsung impressed me by being the only one whose output was actually worse than not having output at all. The printed photograph that they used for a demo was a dark, blotchy mess, with nonexistent gradients.... It was so bad that I almost wondered if it was somebody's idea of abstract art.
Then again, I can pretty reliably recognize HP-printed photos from several feet away by the banding, so maybe it kind of does make sense....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
lp0 on fire
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Samsung laser printers are cheap and just work. The ones at work (and the ones I have at home) just WORK, the only time they don't work is when they're out of paper. You can always print to them, and it's reliable.
On the other hand, the HP printers on the same work network are pieces of crap that get 'lost' all the time ('Printer is not online'), probably because of how terrible the HP drivers are. And those HP drivers nag you all the f@$ing time to install the rest of the HP bloatware.
So now they're going to slap their shitty drivers on the Samsungs and they'll be completely terrible too, and cartridge prices will skyrocket. There's no upside on this for consumers.
The thing is, the Samsung laser printer wasn't *that* much cheaper than the bottom tier of Brother or Konica Minolta laser printers, both of which were miles better.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Look, I just want the machine to put ink on paper. I don't want any innovation here, and certainly not from HP's driver team.
As if millennials are working on or with printers...
Indeed. My daughter is a millennial, and the only time she ever printed anything was for school assignments. Then her school figured out web submission of homework, and even that stopped. Now we only use our printer for printing crap to mail to the government, so some bureaucrat can read the form and manually type it into their computer.
This looks like a transaction that should not be approved.
In this case, a monopoly may actually benefit consumers, since at least the ink cartridges will be interchangeable.
FTA: "The acquisition of Samsung's printer business allows us to deliver print innovation and create entirely new business opportunities with far better efficiency, security, and economics for customers," said HP president and CEO Dion Weisler in a statement.
Huh? Can a Professor of English please parse that gobbeldey-gook sentence for me? Is it even a sentence?
Will these printers have a headphone jack?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The most hilarious part is that, while this is happening, Apple removes the headphone jack and suddenly everyone is freaking our like it is the fucking end of the world.
Sense of proportion. Get some.
Hopefully the headphone jacks are fireproof. The headphone jack outrage has quieted down a little bit now. since there's a good comeback.
And it's all Apple's fault that that little boy burnt himself on that exploding Galaxy phone. He was listening to music, and his parent's gaddamned iPhone 7 didn't have an earphone jack to plug his Dora the Explorer headphones into. Fscking hipsters anyhow!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Because Congress Cut their Budget and will not spend any money on computer upgrades that would save money in the long run?
No, because Congress gave them $8B to upgrade their software, they hired Oracle as a contractor to implement the upgrade, now all the money is gone, and nobody knows why.
Most of HP Ink (pun intended, remember that the HP of Yore split into HP Enterprise for Big Iron and Services, and HP Inc for desktops and Printers, tickers: HPE and HPI) Laser printers, even from the begining of "Laser Time" time, use laser printing Engines from other manufacturers (In the begining, mostly Canon, nowadays, they use Samsumg Engines too). So HP gets the Laser engine from a 3rd party, slaps a Microcontroller, some plastic, writes a bloated driver, and of you go.
Samsung and Canon, on the other hand, do all that, but also make the laser engines...
Also, HP Ink is not Strong in Multifunctional Lasers for SOHO/Prosumer/Office/BigCorporates. And has no presence Whatsoever in the Copier business.
For HP this deal means: ... even Dell
1.) Get rid of a competitor, actually, they probably got Samsung because it was the weaker of the lot, or for the other reasons detailed here. No worries, we still have Brother, Lexmark, Canon, Xerox,
2.) Verticaly integrate the Laser Engine into the production, with the associate cost savings. Sorry for Canon, no more HP bussiness for them in the medium term... (contracts will not be renewed, or renewed in shorter terms than without this deal, new products will be based mostly on Samsung Laser tech).
3.) In the medium term, deny other competitors (Dell, for example) of Said engines (Dell uses Samsung laser engines on many of their house brand lasers printers) or, having competitors using their engines to actually put money on HP's Pocket. Again, most likely contracts will not be renewed, or will be renewed on shorter and/or more expensive terms. If I were Dell, I'd rush to Canon's HQ and invite them some niguiri and Sake to, you know, discuss things.
4.) While the product overlap is Huuuuuge, the Market overlap is not, both Geographicaly (think, for example APAC, not only US) and client wise (enterprise vs consumer vs prosumer/soho). That means that HP Ink printers can reach places were samsung is strong, and Samsung printers can reach places where HP Ink is strong.
5.) Cross selling (Mr 500 employee office, here are your printers, can I interest you in some workstations/desktops/laptops? Mr. 800 employee office, here are your Workstations/desktops/Laptops, can I interest you in some printers to go with them?)
6.) "Cost saving synergies" (i.e Layoffs/Pinkslips/Redundancies).
7.) A nice throve of patents with which to defend from (don't even think on suing me, I have my patent's and Samsung's), or harass (hey, Sign this cross-pattent agreement with me, or we'll sue), or even get royalties money from competitors.
8.) Get a presence in the copier business.
Now, is that worth $1.05*109?
Only time will tell.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
What do batteries catching fire have to do with printers?
One-time thermal printers!
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.