Major acquisitions have become the norm for the gaming and related hardware industries over the past few years. Today marks another major announcement, with HP set on an acquisition of the HyperX brand from Kingston Technologies. The deal is worth over $425 million USD, which is a decent chunk of change for a company worth roughly $35 billion USD.
HyperX is well known for its gaming-oriented PC accessories. The brand offers keyboards, mice, headphones, microphones, branded hardware components, and other accessories. This move marks a major shift for the company, as previous owner Kingston Technologies will relinquish a segment of its market portfolio for the deal. Seeing as HyperX is strongly connected with Kingston for its memory, storage, and other hardware, Kingston will continue to provide those components to make future HyperX products. This suggests that Kingston will consolidate its resources into manufacturing and providing business to business services, while HP is clearly leaning harder into consumer markets.
Anticipating the money
HP anticipates major growth in the computer hardware industry and expects it to be worth $70 billion USD by 2023. More specifically, the company believes that the peripherals market will be worth $12.2 billion USD by 2024 and that gaming peripherals will make up a majority of that market. This reasoning echoes the investment strategies of many other gaming-related companies. OverActive Media is one recent example, as it plans to build an esports arena estimated to cost over $500 million USD in anticipation of future esports growth.
HyperX is highly regarded by gamers for its affordable, but well-designed products.
Both companies seem enthusiastic about the deal. HP is excited to gain the industry leading brand and its expertise in peripherals, while the CEO of HyperX believes the acquisition will take the company to new highs. The deal is expected to be finalized by Q2 of 2021, pending regulatory review and approval. Kingston also seems to be in a good situation, as it will be able to gain a significant sum of cash to work with while also continuing to provide hardware to the HyperX brand.
