Just my brain dump as someone that has worked for two of the companies in question..
HP have been working away in the background to design their own end to end print control so they can get away from the HP Formatters slapped on Samsung engines which has caused issues and made the startup really slow. The next generation of HP A3 coming is end to end HP now that Samsung has been "fully" integrated. This is an attractive proposition now for Xerox as Fujifilm ducks out of the picture; there isn't really allot of vendors out there that own their own engines/IP end to end that might sell - which Xerox desperately need. This obviously also provides an expanded reach which is a no brainier.
HP lacks office/light production (iGen, Versant) which is a huge gap for them, their business is genuinely struggling as their consumables cash cow dries up. They have some fantastic ideas on future tech (immersive computing etc) but they wont pay the bills until the technology wave hits. Ink literally keeps their doors open. HP culturally is also extremely shareholder value driven, whatever works for the shareholder will fly.
Xerox and HP have very good R&D and inventing is in their blood - there is some synergy there. Although Fuji stole allot of the brains from Xerox when they created FXPAL across the road.
Biggest thing allot of people are missing is actually the Fujifilm factor. I don't exaggerate when I say this there is genuine hate between Fujifilm/fujixerox & Xerox corporation they don't trust each other and its personal. The accounting scandal was throwing gas on that fire to.
Fujifilm & Xerox Corp now have the gloves off and it will be knives at fifty paces.
I'm expecting to also see very aggressive moves from Fujifilm in the coming year. Also lots of well paid lawyers rubbing their hands, legal battles ahoy.
Going to be a very trans-formative year for our industry. But we all know that