On January 31st, 2018, Fujifilm and Xerox announced they would be merging into Fuji-Xerox. The two global imaging companies will combine resources to produce new imaging solutions for offices and schools around the world.

Large-scale mergers of this sort typically mean one of two things. Either one of the companies is beleaguered and looking to the other to keep it afloat, or both have identified mutual benefits to combing forces.

In Xerox’s case, the merger stands to make the iconic American tech brand a market-dominating brand with a far greater global reach than it ever enjoyed before. Rather than one company saving the other, the pooling of resources along closely aligned business objectives stands to make next-generation imaging products more accessible and more affordable to the world market.

In order to understand how this $6 billion-dollar acquisition came about, it’s important to understand the two brands’ history of collaboration. Fujifilm and Xerox have been close business partners since the 1960s.

Putting Fuji-Xerox in Perspective

For industry insiders, the fact that Fujifilm would acquire Xerox is less surprising than it may seem from the outside. This is because Fujifilm and Xerox have operated a joint venture called Fuji Xerox since 1962. It is in fact this joint company that is making the purchase, with Fujifilm Holdings earning a 50.1 percent stake in the resulting company.

While Xerox took the lead in bringing state-of-the-art copier and printer technology to Europe and North and South America, Fuji Xerox focused on Asia, Australia, and Japan. In fact, the joint venture became the leading imaging industry brand in Japan, and built an industry-leading research and development department.

Under the leadership of Fujifilm Holdings, Xerox’s iconic research and development centers will merge with those of Fuji Xerox, aligning the two company’s resources towards innovation. Instead of having all of these research laboratories working on separate, often overlapping projects, they can now combine forces to create valuable solutions for customers around the world.

There are a few key factors that played a part in the Fuji-Xerox merger:

  • The merger offers significant immediate value to Xerox shareholders – $45 per share.
  • The merger positions both companies to offer greater long-term value to shareholders, who now own a larger, stronger, more valuable asset.
  • Xerox and Fujifilm have closely aligned track records that demonstrate success in transformation.
  • The merger establishes strong safeguards for governance and ownership.
  • Xerox and Fujifilm’s joint venture has been an important element of Xerox’s competitiveness for years. This merger optimizes that relationship to bring its benefits closer to shareholders.

In fact, the transition team identified $1.25 billion in annual cost savings pre-merger. Moving forward, these synergies will continue to generate greater value and efficiency.

Preparing for the Future of Printing

While much of the official news surrounding this event focuses on the immediate shareholder effects, end users want to know what will happen to their printers and multifunction devices. CIOs and IT professionals want to know if they can rely on Xerox in the future.

The Xerox brand is here to stay, and its newfound access to state-of-the-art research and development labs across the world will give end-users a plethora of new hardware options moving forward. Streamlining the two company’s significant research assets will produce products and services that serve a new generation of customer needs.

Respected brands like Fujifilm and Xerox have spent years developing solutions to some of the most pressing issues in the imaging industry today. With paperless technology representing clear economic and environmental benefits to offices and IT professionals around the world, these companies are consolidating to provide hardware solutions that meet these needs.

While fliers, posters, bookmarks, manuals, and art prints will remain important assets, the future of imaging is about data visualization. For instance, on the announcement of a new series of medical imaging solutions, Fujifilm Medical Systems USA Vice President Bill Lacy said, “One of Fujifilm’s goals is to provide instant access to image data anytime and anywhere regardless of the size of the dataset.”

Having Xerox in the Fujifilm portfolio will make the combined company more capable of bridging the paperless gap and providing industry-leading imaging solutions for today’s mobile-first users. Groundbreaking technology like the award-winning Xerox ConnectKey platform may be integral to those goals.

Are you ready to deploy state-of-the-art Xerox imaging technology in your workplace? Talk to us and we’ll create a solution to fit your needs.