Printer business shows signs of corruption

You know it’s a revolution baby

Cross licensing delights and deceits  are the name of the printing game.

When HP announced its intention to buy Samsung’s printer business for $ 1.05 billion, along with acquiring six thousand employees went the dirty little industry secret of cross licensing as well as the production of printer units for other companies.

Companies such as Dell have been known to source printers from the likes of Lexmark. The effects of the acquisition on the partnerships and technology licensing that Samsung had with other companies has not been disclosed by HP yet. We do, however, know in the past that Samsung has had very close deals with Xerox in sharing technology including design, repair parts, and toner supply.

A few times we have been able to verify with certainty Samsung and Xerox shared printer designs coming to market with identical standalone printers, as well as multi- units. Other times,  identical parts and toner worked in Dell, Samsung and Xerox printers. Although the exact details on the natures of these arrangements are generally kept under tight wraps, details tend to be noticed when repair parts and supplies are ordered. In the past, if one part was unavailable from one company, the repair part with the exact same specifications would be able to be ordered from one of the competitors.

It will be very interesting how some of these pre-existing cross licensing deals are handled in the long run and the effects it will have on the engineering design of future partner and Xerox print units.  Samsung currently holds around 6,500 printing technology patents.