HP Inc. Spreads Its Wings With Samsung Print Business Acquisition

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in May-June 2016.**

HP GLOBAL PARTNER CONFERENCE — HP Inc. (HP) on Monday opened its Global Partner Conference (GPC), being held in Boston, with the news of a definitive agreement to acquire Samsung Electronics Co.’s printer business. The purchase gives the freshly separated print and personal-system vendor a stake in the $55 billion copier industry, where today, the vendor has less than 5 percent market share.

Almost simultaneously with the $1.05 billion Samsung deal, HP launched an A3 portfolio containing 16 new next-generation HP PageWide and LaserJet platforms slated to go on sale in mid-2017.

“We’ve been working with Samsung to build this portfolio during the last 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.{ad}

The Samsung acquisition is the largest print acquisition in HP’s history, showing that HP is putting its money where its mouth is as the company looks to expand its business with a complete portfolio, expand services, and increase profitability for both HP and partners.

Dion Weisler, president and CEO at HP, told partners that by the end of the year, 87 percent of the company’s business would be channel-led, up from 80 percent currently.

At Monday’s conference, print and personal-systems executives talked about how HP is reinventing its business with new products and offerings, services and business models, and improving business processes and making them more effective for partners.

More specifically, the vendor broke down its strategy by sector: In its core business sector, a $415 billion total addressable market (TAM), the company’s goals are to revitalize the consumer, drive commercial business, lead commercial business, and grow premium; in its growth segment, valued at more than $155 billion TAM, the goal is to disrupt the copier segment, accelerate graphics and expand commercial mobility; and, in the future segment, with an estimated TAM of $10 billion to more $30 billion, HP’s objective is to lead in 3D printing and create new and immersive categories.