Xerox Considers Acquiring HP

[prwhite]

According to Eric J. Savitz of Barrons.com:
“Xerox sees $2 billion in synergies from combining the two printer & copier businesses. That's not so bold—HP just unveiled a $1 billion cost-cutting plan, and Xerox is in the middle of an aggressive cost-cutting plan of its own. HP is a leader in desktop printers, but has struggled in enterprise copiers. Xerox plays in the enterprise space but is tiny in desktops. Together, Xerox Packard, or XPQ, if you will, might be a more effective competitor against Canon, Ricoh and Konica Minolta.”

 

[SoggyWinter]

They have a lot of potential in the enterprise print space with Xerox connect key software and both companies have serious penetration with enterprise sales. The downside is that mergers are seldom graceful with consolidating and standardizing services like billing, tech support, supply chaines, etc. I'll be curious to see what production press equipment gets retained (ie, Indigo, Iridesse, etc). I'd like to see XHP build a real competitor for EFI's software stack to get prices down and have an aggressive feature roadmap from both companies.

 

[gregbatch]

One of my concerns is what will happen to HP's Special Products division. Currently they are sparking innovation in envelope printing with their FI-1000 printhead that offers competition to Memjet. Printware (iJetColor) and Xante are both working on printers with the FI-1000 printhead. I can imagine that both companies are a bit nervous about moving forward, though they haven't voiced that.