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Xerox sells printers, copiers, document software, and IT services to businesses and governments around the world.
Xerox is the company that made the office copier a normal piece of furniture. Today it sells printers and multifunction machines that print, scan, and copy, along with the software and services that help big organizations manage all that paper and digital documents. Its customers are mostly businesses, governments, and other large institutions, not people buying a printer for the kitchen table.
The money works like a subscription in disguise. Xerox sells or leases the machines, then earns recurring revenue from supplies, maintenance, and managed print services鈥攅ssentially getting paid to keep the documents flowing. It also sells software and IT infrastructure services, and it has pushed into providing workplace technology support. Customers stick around because ripping out a fleet of office machines and the software behind them is a hassle, and because Xerox's service network is deep. The business faces a hard truth: offices print less than they used to, and the pandemic accelerated that shift. Xerox has responded by cutting costs, buying back stock, and trying to sell more services and software rather than just hardware. It also made a huge, ultimately abandoned bid for HP in 2019 and 2020, a hostile takeover attempt that would have doubled its size in printing鈥攁 deal that failed and left Xerox focused on its own turnaround. Its main competitors include HP and Canon in printers, plus a crowd of software and services firms.
Xerox is a case study in a company managing decline while hunting for growth. It generates cash, pays a dividend, and buys back shares鈥攁 classic move for a mature business with limited places to reinvest鈥攂ut its long-term challenge is convincing customers that it's more than the copier company. It invented much of modern computing in its famous Palo Alto Research Center, including the graphical user interface and the mouse, yet famously failed to commercialize those breakthroughs. Today it's trying to make sure it doesn't repeat that trick with documents and workplace services.
Saved answer 路 last researched 15 Nov 2026