HP Inc. have just announced the completion of its acquisition of HyperX, Kingston Technology Company‘s gaming wing. HP adds HyperX to its gaming portfolio in a deal worth $425 million that was agreed definitively in February 2021.
Under the terms of the deal, Kingston will continue to offer DRAM, SSD and flash products to gamers and general PC users. While HP’s HyperX will offer gaming peripherals, including headsets, keyboards, mice, mouse pads, USB microphones and console accessories.
‘Significant Opportunities’
HP Inc. President and CEO Enrique Lores said he saw “significant opportunities” in the expansive and still expanding peripherals market. HP anticipate the PC hardware industry will be worth $70 billion by 2023 with the PC peripherals market reaching $12.2 billion by 2024. Gaming peripherals represent “a disproportionate share of this growth.”
Alex Cho, president of Personal Systems at HP Inc. said, “HyperX has built a loyal following among gamers and we look forward to further strengthening the HyperX brand.”
Hyper Heritage
HyperX had served as Kingston’s ‘high-performance’ division for 18 years and in that time were a vehicle for KTC’s innovation in various categories. The line’s first product was a then-swift 370MHz DDR1 RAM chip which they followed up with DDR2 chips in 2004, DDR3 chips in 2007 before expanding their portfolio into solid state drives in 2011.
They expanded their portfolio outside the PC case in 2014 with their QPad collaboration ‘Cloud’ headset, then added keys in 2016 and mice in 2017 with Alloy FPS and Pulsefire respectively.
Room for Two?
Of course, HP already have a gaming brand. They acquired VoodooPC in 2006 and then in 2013, they were rebranded as OMEN. A further rebrand in 2014 brought the HP name back to gaming. While Voodoo and OMEN were initially known for their gaming desktops and laptops, they later added accessories to the lineup.
Just like their desktop offerings, OMEN accessories are aimed at the enthusiast willing to spend a little extra. Since HyperX occupies that same sphere with their peripherals, it will be interesting to see if how HP will position each brand. As sound as both OMEN and HyperX’s reputations are, it’s unlikely that HP will compete with itself in such a cutthroat space.
Is this the beginning of a beloved name in gaming? If familiar with the brand, what were your favourite HyperX products? Is Kingston holding their memory business a shrewd move?
