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back to article Halfway through Meg Whitman's HP turnaround time: Is it working?

Two years in, is Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman’s recovery plan bearing green shoots? The company beat gloomy Wall Street projections for the fiscal fourth quarter and 2013 year. HP’s top line still took a battering but PC sales were not as bad as expected – and better than IDC’s estimated decline for the market. Whitman …

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  1. Ralph B

    Here's an idea

    HP should do a Nokia and sell their PC division to Microsoft. MS get some guaranteed market share for their unloved Windows 8 OS, and HP get to concentrate on the profitable business of selling stupidly expensive printer ink.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Here's an idea

      Can't see that helping Windows 8 adoption. There is simply no way I'd let it anywhere near our PCs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, internals are marginally better, but knowing how inept* most users are, I don't want to have to train people how to use an OS. If that is the case, I might as well look at other, potentially cheaper options; which is the point that I think MSFT is missing.

      *Seriously, it shocks me how people struggle to use what by now should be considered a rudimentary work tool.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Here's an idea

      Or the 200 different laser printer models they sell.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Here's an idea

        Plus the 200 inkjets, which often have the same model number ,but give you no clue as to if you have the "A/B/C/D" version, so you end up downloading all 4 of the 150MB drivers for your model.

        I did find the "where you might find your model number" section of their web site an excellent manual on how to write a farce.

        HP isn't a company, but a series of vaguely connected silos all doing their own thing.

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  2. knarf

    Lack of Investment

    R&D spend fell 20 per cent to $729m during the year while sales and marketing increased four per cent to $3.35bn.

    Really have to invent again.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NHS to the rescue

    OK , only in UK terms, but the growing amount of business HP is seeing in the NHS as more and more Hospitals and Trust outsource will certainly help.

    Much cloudy, big datay, desky, mobiley stuff being sold in there and in some cases the amount of new and additional busiess these contracts are accruing is surprising even HP.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They lost a big chunk of their future business when they screwed up Palm.

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    1. Amy Wohl
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      Enterprise SW Sales Count

      Back when HO was doing $500 million in SW sales they asked me why I didn'[t cover them. I suggested that SW was such a tny part of their mix (less tha 1%), that I could not imagine what I'd say. Many years later they're up to $3 Billion -- still a pretty small percentage.

      I have no idea what they thought they'd do with Autonomy, any more than I could understand why they bought Palm and then did nothing with it. SW deals are notoriously hard to integrate whicih is why they should be carefully selected and meticuously planned. (Note: IBM is very clever at this; they like to buy IBM Partners whom they already know well and whose software is oftn "pre-integrated.")

      But if you're an nterprise vendor with the cash and the management bandwidth required, this is a grea time for acquisitions, especially enterprise cloud software which costs much more to bring to market and to evolve than most startups (exempt Workday) plan on.

      We'd all like HP to return o its former glories, but depending on it's old PC business won't be the way. They need to look at Dell which is rapidly swappping PC's for services growth.

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