Samsung's board has approved the sale of its printer operation to HP for $1.05 billion "to concentrate on its core business areas," it said in a press release. It plans to spin off the printer division into a separate company as of November 1st, then sell it its US rival, pending shareholder approval. Samsung's printer business employs 6,000 people and sold 2 trillion won ($1.8 billion) in printers in 2015. In its own news release, HP said that the deal is the largest print acquisition in its history. The US company sees it as an opportunity to "disrupt and reinvent the $55 billion copier industry, a segment that hasn't innovated in decades." It aims to basically to replace copiers completely with multi-function printers. "Copiers are outdated, complicated machines with dozens of replaceable parts requiring inefficient service and maintenance agreements," it said. Samsung says it will "source printers from HP and continue to market [them] in Korea under the Samsung brand."