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HP is Tech's New Top Dog?
bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek argues that HP is the new Big Blue: 'Now, tech is about to get a new biggest behemoth. It's HP. The Palo Alto, Calif., PC and printer giant had higher sales than IBM last quarter, and analysts project it will finish 2006 with greater annual sales than Big Blue for the first time ever: $91 billion for HP vs. $90.5 billion for IBM. The reason HP pulled ahead is simple: IBM last year sold off its $11 billion PC business to Lenovo Group Ltd. But, because the companies have chosen fundamentally different paths, with HP aggressively going after consumers while IBM focuses on corporations, HP is expected to grow faster than IBM in coming years. Since both use blue in their logos, you might say there's a new Big Blue in the house.'"
If this is true, you think Carly Fiorina will feel vindicated?
She was certainly vilified when they ran her out of the corner office. If it turns out that her years were the ones that built the foundation on which a renewed greatness was built, will anybody remember?
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
I was a corporate lawyer for years and I did deals with IBM. Corporate is where it's at, man! One deal, millions of bucks, strict negotiations over service level agreements that require priorizing and funneling of calls. Consumer-oriented business can't compete... all those millions of dorks out there struggling with their PC/printer/scanner/whatever which they paid a grand for in one small transaction... one support call wipes out the profit for several sales! Hell, look at Logitech... I had problems with speakers. Just the cost of shipping me replacements was as much as the customs-declared value of the speakers themselves. Consumers are leeches! ;-)
That what this demonstrates is that as soon as Carly Fiona stopped holding the company back, it sprung forward to greatness?
Anyway this is interesting but isn't such a big deal to me perfectly. Nearly all the HP products I care about went to Agilent...
I don't see a lot of "new era for HP" in this story, nor do I see a lot of strategy for success. What I do see is that HP, which was once one of the leaders in technology R&D, has settled into a role where it's fundamentally a printer company.
Am I missing something?
Breakfast served all day!
There will only ever be one Big Blue. If IBM wants to solve a problem, IBM finds a way to solve the problem. When HP builds a computer can beat a Grand Master at chess, then they can be the Big P.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
HP or IBM?
Personally, IBM research and development puts me in a constant state of awe. I believe they have some of the most brilliant minds in the world pushing the boundries of science. Maybe thier end products don't always reflect the level of R&D invested, but don't kid yourself... the last thing HP wants is IBM's full, undivided attention at it's market share.
IBM's strength is in it's diversity. Just because they cut PC's to Lenovo doesn't mean anything about the future of the companies presence in the future technology market.
Remember this little gem?..... http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportat ion/index.html
People are also starting to catch on to the fact that HP's newer printers are crap.
Yes, once upon a time HP made great printers. Plenty of LaserJets still in use today. But nowadays you're more likely to find out that your HP printer is slow, noisy, requires a 30MB driver download that's buggy as all hell, and breaks in under a year.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Not sure what to make of the rather incomprehensible parent comment, but I do have a hard time waxing poetic on Carly Fiorina.
"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore." - Carly Fiorina
While working in Manhattan I saw two entire floors' worth of HP staff become unemployed with a stroke of Carly's pen. At the same time she was eliminating and/or offshoring thousands of US tech jobs, Carly Fiorina and her ilk were cruising around in Jetstreams and luxury yachts, hobnobbing with celebrities and politicians. She epitomizes the grasping callousness, hypocrisy and greed that permeates the top levels of corporate America.
FTA: Both have had their ups and downs but persevere because they have a knack for getting out of stagnating businesses and finding the next big thing. Size may not guarantee the market power it once did. But it does imply a certain staying power.
What is the next big thing in computing and technology? Would either HP or IBM or even Intel recognize it if they saw it? I doubt it. There is something about becoming a behemoth that prevents a company from seeing fast moving trends or foresee future ones. Or, if they do see it, they are too slow to respond in a timely manner. It has something to do with bureaucracy and the inevitable proliferation of internal operating rules. IMO, IBM and HP should create small quasi-independent research labs and give them the task of finding the next big thing. And I would tell them to look for solutions to current insolvable huge problems in the industry, such as the software reliability crisis. Indeed, the first company to come up with a solution to this problem (and obtain the lion share of the IP) is guaranteed to dictate the course of the computing industry for decades to come. One man's opinion.
I didn't say financially profitable. I said engineering innovation. I used to work at CompUSA (Yes, hell on earth, but hey...I was young, and needed the money.)
HP everything never came back. Printers, computers, notebooks...designed well, ran well. The only thing that ever really sucked was their digital cameras.
What Carly destroyed was the Engineering genius that used to work there. Just as well, many of them now work for Google or Apple.
HP used to be an envious place to work for if you were an engineer. Now it's a PHB breeding ground.
Proliant turned a mediocre x86 server business into a huge success. HP would have been screwed if they hadn't aquired Compaq.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
HP has actively thrown away all of their technical edge to become Yet Another PC Vendor.
...As well as the Alpha line which they acquired.
They nearly created the printer market, and now their printers are crap.
They've only released one new RPN calculator, and it's...questionable.
They're actively trying to kill off the HP-UX server/OS line.
They've already killed off the PA-RISC processor line.
All of their worthwhile tech gear got spun off as Agilent.
All they do now is make crappy printers and passable PCs in server cases. That's great--I'm sure they'll make tons of money grinding out crap without doing any basic research anymore, but it's lousy for the industry.
I don't think that HP will ever recover from Carly F. She destroyed the company and is still running free on the streets.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
1) That article is based on estimates. We'll see what happens at the end of the year.
2) If I sold a $100 lead weight to everyone on the planet would it make me a technology leader? Sales is an arbitrary statistic and probably one of the worst. Why not use profit margin or return on investment?3) How about patents?
4) How about leading-edge custom processor design. IBM owns this generation of game consoles (Wii, ps3, xbox360 processors are all being designed at IBM). Why? IBM has an entire service organization that will build you your very own custom processor and will let you be as hands-on or as hands-off as you want. And they win awards for doing it!