Samsung today announced that it has reached an agreement to sell the entire global operations and assets of its printing business to HP in a deal valued over $1 billion. The company says that this deal is part of its efforts to focus more on its core business areas. With the approval of shareholders, Samsung will spin off the Printing Business Unit into a separate company and then sell a 100 percent stake in the newly created company and its overseas assets to HP. Both companies expect the transaction to close within one year after receiving the appropriate regulatory approvals. This deal gives Samsung the right to source printers from HP and continue to sell them in South Korea under the Samsung brand.

Samsung reportedly decided to sell its printing business due to tough competition from rivals like Canon, Epson and obviously HP. It decided to get out of this business to focus more on its smartphone, memory chip and TV business. HP will get 6,000 new employees once the deal is closed by the second half of next year. Almost 2,000 of them are research and development engineers while 1,000 are sales and support staff. The rest work in manufacturing and service. This deal will immediately give HP a big presence in Asia’s printing market aside from Samsung’s laser printing technology and its over 6,500 printing technology patents.