back to article Happy dealers, solid managers. So what's wrong at HP?

What’s going on at HP? CEO Meg Whitman has pulled out the scythe and is whipping it through the troubled hardware titan, chopping out the weak and underperforming bits and clearing a path back to a market-leading position. But trouble keeps cropping up. The latest batch came in when HP cried foul play over its $10.3bn of …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HP aren't active players in two big growth markets. Mobile phones and tablets. They had products in this market until they screwed it all up.

    I'm sure they will buy up another phone maker and run them into the ground too.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All makes sense

    We have been shifting HP for years and sell the higher price to end users on HPs support (which I have found to be better than others). In the last year I have been selling far more Lenovos because im getting more IT for the same price.

    What is interesting is the push by HP to get smaller companies involved in their partner plan and often call us for a natter. Having been in the business since the 90's *we* were considered too small by many, thats manufacturers and distributors alike, to be bothered with or was given such low margins that we hardly did any business with them. But since the recession and with some of the big boys going bust these same people now suddenly want my business!!

    We tend to buy from Ebuyer these days since we can get PCs often as much as £100 less than Ingram Micro. figure that one out!! I would prefer to find someone that's even more competitive than these, even if its trade only.

    As an old account manager from IM once said to me, "Sell £1m a month and I will put you on the top tier discounts"

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HP can't hack software acquisitions

    For over 20 years I have been watching HP's performance from a discreet distance. First of all because I worked in software marketing at DEC, and HP was one of our most serious competitors. More recently, because HP acquired Compaq which acquired DEC, so it's now the source of my pension! Not too ironic.

    I don't recall the messy details, but I do remember that HP has acquired at least a dozen or so important software companies in that time. To my knowledge, every single one was a train wreck. HP has always been very good at creating and supporting its own software products (such as HP-UX, and SoftBench which was a superb IDE in its day), but something in its culture makes it severely allergic to foreign-grown software. Or maybe it's the clash of management cultures.

    I find it very surprising that HP's top management has never learned the obvious lesson that their company will almost inevitably reject any software organ transplants. Always has, apparently always will.

  4. Spoonsinger

    Re:- scythe-wielding.....

    They are always scythe-wielding at HP. Being doing it since 2001 by my knowledge, (last time I worked there), and judging by the culture at time, probably during the nineties as well. Always amazes me they still have any staff.

  5. danny_0x98

    My hypothesis is that HP is the example of what goes wrong when a Board manages by stock price.

  6. ben_myers
    Angel

    Yet another symptom of HP Dysfunction - Pavilion v Presario

    Hp bought Compaq way back in 2001, yet 12 years later it is still peddling Compaq-branded product. You mean that the Compaq brand still has that magic cachet?

    This week I tore down two pairs of HP consumer laptops, a Presario V2000 and a Pavilion dv2000, followed by a Presario 6000 and a Pavilion dv6000. Guess what? They are almost identical, with differing cosmetic appearance. Oh, yeah. And some fools designed the Presario and Pavilion pairs with different hinges, hence a different plastic chassis. What does this mean? It jacks up the cost of producing the two models, because Foxconn has to retool the production line and molding machines between production runs of near-identical models.

    You want to improve margins on the junky HP consumer laptops? Kill off one brand name or the other, either Presario or Pavilion. Same with the consumer desktops, although they use all the same plastic, metal and electronics, just a different BIOS showing HP or Compaq, and different markings on the plastic.

    Ben Myers ben_myers@charter.net

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yet another symptom of HP Dysfunction - Pavilion v Presario

      Ben, you simply don't get it.

      In order to do what you suggest, the current VP of Presario and (different) VP of Pavilion, and their (different, not duplicate at all) armies of flunkies would have to accept that there's no need for both of them.

      Obviously managers and administratium are a corporate's most important deliverable in the modern LEAN environment, therefore by definition you cannot have too many managers therefore HP still needs both Pavilion and Presario.

      Bloody clueless techies.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yet another symptom of HP Dysfunction - Pavilion v Presario

      They should kill them both off as they've never been good at making computers. The best place for HP is in the history books.

  7. PeterM42
    FAIL

    HP have "Lost the plot"

    It happened about the time they brought out the LaserJet 5

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