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HP is Tech's New Top Dog?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the top-of-the-heap dept.

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.'"

9 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Carly, carly, carly... by penguinstorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Carly, carly, carly... by Retric · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think HP is doing better than IBM. IBM is doing a lot of high margin sales where HP is doing slightly higher volume low profit sales.

      Which would you like to have a 40% profit on 1 billion or a 1.4% profit on 10 billion in sales?

    2. Re:Carly, carly, carly... by demachina · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No :)

      Carly had reached the point that she was a perpetual distraction, everyone was talking about her more than HP, so I would be inclined to say HP is doing better because she is gone. She was a one women wrecking crew for morale at HP, and her blatant elitism is offensive to most. In particular employees hated her when she was laying them off but buying Gulfstreams, having HP pay to move her yacht from East to West coast, and on perpetual company funded jet setting trips with celebrities mostly to build her political career. She acted more like a Duchess than a business person.

      Her most famous quote "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore. We all have to compete for jobs.", while probably true is a purely stupid thing for a CEO of an American company, with American workers, dependent on sales to a lot of American geeks to say out loud.

      --
      @de_machina
  2. Yay. by Vengeance · · Score: 4, Funny

    Self-igniting batteries are the path to success in business. Who would have guessed?

    --
    It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
  3. So let me get this straight... by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From my read of TFA:
    1. IBM is an enterprise IT company, HP is going after consumers.
    2. Margins on consumer technology are razor thin.
    3. Fortunately, HP has created a printer business with huge margins on ink jet cartridges etc.
    4. ???
    5. HP Profits, IBM quakes in its boots.

    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!
  4. IBM is still killing them in market cap by DrSbaitso · · Score: 4, Informative

    IBM Market Cap: $120.5B
    HP Market Cap: $84.3B

    IBM has refocused itself to a large degree as a service company, whereas HP still relies on shipping units.

    In any event, neither company holds a candle to MSFT or GOOG in terms of market cap, and those are really the "top dogs of tech" if you want to use a clumsy phrase. HP is certainly more of a "top dog" in hardware, but who cares about that?

    --
    beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
    1. Re:IBM is still killing them in market cap by cowscows · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would hope that there are enough people on /. with a solid enough grasp of technology to be less impressed with market numbers, and instead be able to actually see what a company has contributed. At least when ranking them in terms of a top dog in tech.

      Google has done some cool stuff, no doubt, but their contributions to the tech world are a mere blip on a timeline that has IBM footprints all over it. Not that that's Google's fault, they're a relatively new company, we'll have to wait and see how long they remain relevant for.

      MS certainly is a top dog, although one can argue over the value of some of their contributions, everyone else definately pays attention to what they're doing. I don't think the average techie is particularly concerned with HP's upcoming ideas/products. But I will agree with the article summary on one point, their logo is definitely blue. Good catch on that one.

      --

      One time I threw a brick at a duck.

  5. HP deserves to win over IBM by totro2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I work in a datacenter at a billion-dollar software company with many HP and IBM big iron servers. I don't work at IBM or HP. We like HPs **way** better, as they are far easier to manage:
    -HP's boot way faster
    -HP's have sane BIOS's. IBM's have text-based, very slow BIOS's.
    -HP's break down less often. IBM's have more fragile hardware.
    -When HP's do break down, the fix is always way faster and straightforward.
    -IBM tech support guys need to visit us so often that there is a desk dedicated to them!
    -HP's report hardware errors in plain english, IBM error codes always are obscure, like 20EE000B (which means "no bootable disk found")
    -HP's website is better when you're searching for updates and such

  6. Re:Well duh... by nbvb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    really?

    I guess you haven't seen the Integrity line then. Serious performance, blows away both the Sun and IBM UNIX systems. Superdomes rock. :)