Samsung has announced its selling off its printer business to HP for $1.05 billion. HP says it wants to use the purchase to "disrupt and reinvent" the $55 billion copier industry, which "hasn’t innovated in decades."
"Copiers are outdated, complicated machines with dozens of replaceable parts requiring inefficient service and maintenance agreements," says HP, and it’s apparently happy to buy into that. The deal is the largest print acquisition in HP’s history, with Samsung spinning off its printer business (including 6,000 employees) into a separate company that will be sold in totality to HP. Samsung will continue to sell printers under its own brand in Korea, but will source them from HP.
Alongside the printer sale, Samsung also announced that vice chairman Jay Y. Lee — son of hospitalized chairman Kun-Hee Lee — will be nominated to the board of directors. The older Lee oversaw Samsung’s rise to prominence, from a budget brand to a company that generates roughly a fifth of South Korea’s GDP, but his reign has been tainted by accusations of corruption. The younger Lee is widely expected to take control of the company when his father dies.
from The Verge http://ift.tt/oZfQdV
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