It's embrace, extend, extinguish all over again.
HP Ink buys Samsung's printer business for a BILLION dollars
HP Inc has agreed to purchase Samsung's printer business for over $1bn, the largest print acquisition in its history. Describing the deal as "accelerating the disruption of the $55bn copier industry" HP Ink expects its acquisition of Samsung's tech will help it replace copiers with "superior" multifunction printer (MFP) …
COMMENTS
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Monday 12th September 2016 13:51 GMT Charlie Clark
How come?
Looks to me like standard market consolidation (boost margins by eliminating a competitor), though the rider that Samsung will be buying equity is interesting. HP has far more IP in the printing sector than Samsung and those 3D printers would fit well with Samsung's industrial processes.
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Monday 12th September 2016 11:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
And tomorrow...
HP Inc will announce a round of layoffs of most of the Samsung staff.
After all, that is what MS did to Nokia and what seems to happen right after a takeove where the PHB's tallk about 'synergy' and all that othe claptrap.
As HP altready share printers with Canon, where's the competition especially for workgroup (and more) printers?
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Monday 12th September 2016 19:34 GMT DonL
Re: And tomorrow...
"Wouldn't trade it for any of the past HP devices."
HP has some nice printers these days with a great price per page, like the HP Pagewide Pro X477DW (very fast/affordable and based on ink) and the HP M880 with futuresmart.
I agree that their previous offering wasn't that good though.
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Monday 19th September 2016 22:36 GMT Alan Brown
Re: And tomorrow...
"HP has some nice printers these days with a great price per page,"
Only if you compare those prices with HP printers of the recent past. When we were looking to replace our troublesome CLJ4700s the like-for-like replacements had a 3 times higher operating cost.
Paying 5 times as much for someone else's hardware was a drop in the bucket compared to the six-figure savings made over the lifetime of the printer.
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Monday 12th September 2016 19:38 GMT katrinab
Re: And tomorrow...
I wasn't too impressed with mine, it lasted about a year of domestic use, about 1 1/2 sets of cartridges, before it required a new fuser unit and transfer belt that cost more than a new printer. I've got a 12 year old Canon inkjet that is still working perfectly, only problem is it doesn't support network printing, airprint and so on.
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Monday 12th September 2016 21:18 GMT Down not across
Re: And tomorrow...
Bah!. I love me some Samsung printer. Wouldn't trade it for any of the past HP devices.
But you're missing the point. The past ones are fine. Current ones probably less so. Ok they may not be multifunction, but you can pry my various old LaserJets (III, 4, 4700) out of my cold dead hands. They just work. Sure you need to clean or replace rollers occasionally but that's about it.
And they don't dry out like inkjets. Some Epsons I tried have been pretty much relegated as scanners, although I find myself using old UMAX SCSI scanners via SANE more often than the Epsons.
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Tuesday 13th September 2016 05:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: And tomorrow...
Laserjet 4200 here! Rescued from being chucked into the skip when it was replaced by a newer model.
Also fitted with a duplexer and have a spare toner cartridge to go with it.
The amount of printing that I do (letters and CVs) means that it should last a while yet - depending fuser/rollers.
Printed out a 150+ page user manual for a digital camera for my father a couple of months ago - no problem. Wouldn't want to do that on a little inkjet
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Tuesday 13th September 2016 09:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: And tomorrow...
Agree with you on older Laserjets.
When I joined company it was using LJ 5L and 6L connected to our instrumentation and a trio of 6MP to print reports. I had to retire the 6MP over time as the heated rollers went (one too many jammed report slips and no money for replacement parts), but the 5L/6L kept going and I've only stopped using them because of a lack of parallel port support on the instruments we are now using.
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Tuesday 13th September 2016 12:41 GMT Charles 9
Re: And tomorrow...
I once had L's but gave up on them after acquiring a 5P and having too many issues with the paper feeder. Since P's have EDO SIMM slots it was possible to upgrade them to handle full-page 600dpi graphics, plus since it used a traditional paper feed system, it was much easier to do a manual duplex.
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Tuesday 13th September 2016 19:29 GMT Danny 14
Re: And tomorrow...
Mono HPs are fine. We have a functioning HP4000 and three 2300s in daily use along with some more modern 401s. Colour printers have been a bag of shite (except the 3525 that ones a trooper) 4600s were rubbish, 2700 was bad, 5525 is possibly the worst of the lot (fundamental design flaw with the transfer belts). We switched to canons for colour and have had no issues (but they are only 18 months old so too early to tell)
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Monday 12th September 2016 20:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: And tomorrow...
After all, that is what MS did to Nokia and what seems to happen right after a takeove where the PHB's tallk about 'synergy' and all that othe claptrap.
No, it's what Microsoft did to the former Nokia cellphone division - not to be confused with Nokia as an entire company.
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Monday 12th September 2016 13:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I feel a disturbance in the force @psychonaut
>"As if a billion Samsung print drivers suddenly expanded to 15 times their optimal size"
No worries, the Samsung drivers are already bloated six ways to Sunday. Samsung download pages are already pure html hell, with no release notes or other vital information available.
HP has had the Universal PS/PCL drivers for over a decade or so, supporting laser printers dating back to 90s.
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Monday 19th September 2016 22:42 GMT Alan Brown
Re: I feel a disturbance in the force @psychonaut
"HP has had the Universal PS/PCL drivers for over a decade or so, supporting laser printers dating back to 90s."
HP's PS interpreter has the interesting feature of only allowing 1024 bytes of PS headers when the standard allows for 4096.
When the inevitable happens the printers will shit over a few hundred pages if not power cycled.
I flagged this to HP in 2003 when I discovered it in HP 4100s (which they wouldn't repair) and despite promises made back then to sort it out, that flaw is still there.
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Monday 12th September 2016 13:02 GMT Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese
Re: Goes around comes around
I remember years ago buying an HP DeskJet (no model number, for it was the only desktop inkjet that they made) purely because of its ability to support plug-in font cartridges. The printer came with Courier installed, and for £££s I got a cartridge to provide Prestige Elite.
Connected to my amber-screened 8088-toting DOS machine by a parallel cable.
Happy days
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Monday 12th September 2016 12:57 GMT Richard Wharram
Nooooooo
Admittedly I don't print much so don't buy the top-of-the-range printers but I've never had a printer I didn't physically hate and fantasise about attacking with shit-smeared power tools until I got my Samsung.
I am largely indifferent to the Samsung printer which is probably about the best I could hope for.
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Monday 12th September 2016 13:58 GMT ColonelClaw
Here's a fun diversion...
First look at this photo:
https://www.3printr.com/file/2016/05/HP-MJF-3D-Drucker.jpg
...Guess how big you think it is...
...and here's the answer:
https://575717b777ff8d928c6b-704c46a8034042e4fc898baf7b3e75d9.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/9484528_multi-jet-fusion-3d-printer-hp-focused_t4928f92f.png
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Monday 12th September 2016 14:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Why I don't trust HP - reason #72
Over a year ago my HP Laserjet told me it was low on black ink or toner or something. I thought, sod this, I can't afford to remortgage, so I left it. Every 100 copies it pops up a message telling me that quality will suffer, but I can press OK to be not nagged for 100 copies. So I press OK; there has been no noticeable reduction in print quality. I have not replaced anything.
This is all true.
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Monday 12th September 2016 14:22 GMT mrbawsaq
Re: Why I don't trust HP - reason #72
The last HP home office deskjet that I had got a severe beating that it did not survive. The reason - constant out of paper messages and refusals to print when it was full of paper.
Nothing made by HP will ever cross the threshold of my abode ever again.
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Monday 12th September 2016 17:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why I don't trust HP - reason #72
I forgot the brand of printer, but I "fixed" one for a neighbour by checking the manual... after 10,000 prints it refuses to do *anything* until it has had an engineer service it. On looking it up, this meant changing the print head... or just pressing the right combination of buttons to pretend we did, as it was around £200 for a replacement as now out of production and the new model sold for £100.
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Monday 12th September 2016 20:10 GMT tekHedd
Re: Why I don't trust HP - reason #72
yeah, my nextdoor neighbor has also been pressing OK every few weeks. It's a very silly machine.
I threw away my inkjet printer because it wouldn't feed paper (except when it fed two pages) and was always either out of ink or clogged. It was hardly used, but I couldn't ethically sell it and I wouldn't give it to my worst enemy.
That's speaking as a consumer. As an investor... um... somehow I'm not feeling an uncontrollable urge to invest in HP based on this news.
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Monday 12th September 2016 15:35 GMT Ian Moyse
Less Innovation, more renovation!
Interesting to see HP moving more to hardware with this and its selloff of its software division. As others focus on moving to the new world of cloud, mobile, IOT and more profitable innovative sectors HP decides to move more to the old world and print, a lower margin commodity world with users increasingly printing less and less as they digest content digitally across devices !
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Monday 12th September 2016 16:09 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Less Innovation, more renovation!
"Interesting to see HP moving more to hardware with this and its selloff of its software division."
You missed the split. There are now two HPs. HPE sold the software division. HP inc, which is the hardware and printer ink business, is the one which made this purchase.
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Monday 12th September 2016 22:12 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Can't remember the last time I printed something
"Printing is stupid and primitive"
You are making the common mistake of thinking that everyone else has the same life as yourself.
I've just been printing the handouts for my wife's sewing class. I don't think taking a laptop & showing round would be as useful. That's just one of the very many use cases that you don't happen to have.
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Tuesday 13th September 2016 01:15 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: Can't remember the last time I printed something
I'll stop printing documents for review when my boss springs for a second monitor.
It's entirely up to him when he'd like to stop spending $20/month on toner, and splash out on the $25 video card needed to connect the second monitor already on hand. It's been in the works for several years.
Decision Making 101.
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Monday 19th September 2016 23:40 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Can't remember the last time I printed something
"It's entirely up to him when he'd like to stop spending $20/month on toner, and splash out on the $25 video card needed to connect the second monitor already on hand. It's been in the works for several years."
As has that computer, obviously.
Just about everything made in the last 5 years can drive 2 monitors without add-in cards and most intel-chipset systems up to 10 years have the capability.
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Monday 12th September 2016 17:30 GMT ma1010
Once upon a time..
HP made printers that were just TANKS. The HP III Laser? Where I used to work we had one that did hundreds of thousands of copies and just kept going. We even did double-sided printing (in a single sided printer) by just taking the paper that came out, turning it over and putting it back in the paper tray. (Yes, we had special software that printed the pages in reverse order on the back side.) It worked perfectly and gave very little trouble if you'd just keep it clean.
Where I work now, we have a bunch of ancient 9040n printers that just keep chugging along doing hundreds of pages a day. They break down once in a while, but occasional, simple repairs heave kept them going year after year.
Back in the day, HP sure knew how to build great printers.
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Monday 19th September 2016 23:42 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Once upon a time..
" Where I used to work we had one that did hundreds of thousands of copies and just kept going."
The official lifespan of a 4700 is 1 million prints. We got 2 million out of it, but it was a bit tired by then and the reason it had to do it was due delays caused by bickering about my refusal to buy any more HPs on economic grounds.
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Monday 12th September 2016 17:58 GMT Mage
Printing?
Really important in the 1990s to 2006... now I copy colour photos / images to USB stick to show on laptops / TVs and "print" B&W text and some other stuff to 9.7" Kindle or 6" kindle or 6.8" Kobo.
Or I make a web page. I replaced the (working) MFP inkjet with a basic colour duplex laser for same price as a set of ink cartridges when we really need paper or card copy.
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Tuesday 13th September 2016 10:03 GMT Chz
Same old, same old.
While I admit the SOHO Samsungs that I've used are less crap than the HPs of recent vintage, a full set of colour toner cartridges still costs as much as the actual printer did. What, exactly, is my incentive to not throw it out and get a new one? (In my case, the utter horror at the wastefulness of it and the fact that I was only out of black ink)