Samsung looks to close sale of printer business this summer
Under the terms of the deal, HP will pay Samsung $1.05b for the assets, which include over 6,000 employees (who are guaranteed 5 years of employment) and will gain the 4.2% share of the worldwide printer market held by Samsung. This will bring HP’s share of the worldwide printer market to 41.1% when the deal closes, essentially back to where it was in 2015, when a number of smaller printer companies entered the market. While none individually have significant share, they were able to gain some traction at the cost of HP’s share.
Samsung continues to divest itself of businesses or segments that are either unprofitable or are in highly competitive markets that are growing slowly, and this goes for Samsung affiliates also. Samsung Display (pvt) has closed a number of inefficient LCD fabs over the last few quarters, and is converting them into far more profitable OLED small panel production lines. This underlying drive to gain incremental profitability by eliminating marginal businesses continues to be the focus across the Samsung organization, and the sale of the printer business to HP is a perfect example.