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HP Rethinking Wisdom of Spinning Off PC Division
bdking writes "After signing off on former CEO Leo Apotheker's proposal to spin off or sell HP's personal computer unit, the company's braintrust is reassessing the wisdom of dumping a division that contributes nearly 30% of revenue and holds together a valuable supply chain."
HP appears concerned not so much for the revenue generated by PC hardware, but instead by access to various distribution and supply channels. It seems that just announcing a spin-off has affected their access to retail distributors.
I won't purchase an HP device (didn't before, either) and don't recommend them to friends and family (didn't then, either). This is just reinforcement of my beliefs. Who wants to own a device, that the manufacturer doesn't want themselves?
Did I miss something? Is HP begin run by Reed Hastings now?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Fire the board, they showed their stripes years ago with Carly, and again with other bungled decisions. They have got to be the most incompetent board for any company of their size in the world. The board lost the HP way long ago, and it hasn't changed that much since then.
The whole rotting thing has got to go and the culture has to restored from the top. Nothing less will do.
Thats what happens when mbas take over running of corporations. Everything is geared towards teaching of maximizing profit minimizing costs in those programs in ultimate end, and even if some programs incorporate engineering concepts like systems management and so on, the mba types eventually lack on strategic planning and vision.
flop. thats what you get if you hire too much suits or put them in charge.
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When HP absorbed EDS they thought they'd finally be able to compete in the lucrative snake oil business of large scale "consulting" (a la IBM), but after a massive reorg and an almost precision extraction of any talent prevalent in the EDS husk they're left with nothing but the most clueless of drabs.
To watch them flail around and try to bail out of this self-inflicted situation by dumping their hardware division has been entertaining.
I'm sure everyone has their opinion, but after throwing away a bunch of $2000 HP printers in the last year, we've had enough.
I started buying Xerox and Oki printers and so far, they have been fantastic. The Okis in particular seem to be built well enough to take a bullet, and the toner cartridges are huge compared to an equivalent HP printer, yet they are priced about the same.
I think we are done with HP forever at this point.
I just got an email from HP about this. HP's Personal Systems Group is the #1 PC maker on the planet, and that won't change. I can assure you our future is brighter than ever. Spirit of a Startup Our preferred course to harness our vision of the future is to build a separate, more agile company. It's time to think like a startup again. It's time to be nimble and revolutionary. It's time again for world-changing innovation. And so, it's time we realized we're at a crossroads in an evolving HP. But don't misunderstand: We-the same great folks who make HP PCs today-will make them tomorrow. We will continue to build on our legacy creating reliable, stylish, and high-performance PCs to improve your personal and professional life.
Well, somebody has to use the Quikster name, might as well be them.
I see a lot of really strange business trends going on. It seems so many companies are announcing terribly thought out decisions, and then reversing their opinion, and an entirely different set are content to do nothing but play a game with patents, where nobody builds or designs anything anymore, they just collect up the patents and sue people who actually are building and designing things. Why does this feel like some really weird corporate-hijinks fiction novel we're living in?
Don't be so dismissive of MBAs... If you stop falling for the illusion that their 'business' is running businesses efficiently, and start viewing them as amoral rational actors feathering their nests at the expense of anybody whose pockets they can reach, you'll see that they are extraordinarily effective a locating targets, infesting them, sucking them dry, and then moving on, somehow not dragged down by their record of failure and occasional malfeasance...
Never make the mistake of underestimating a superb parasite because it is lousy at whatever non-noxious lifeform it is mimicking...
HP has always had extremely poor support at the consumer level, IMO. I remember about 10 years ago I wanted to buy a replacement Li-Ion battery for the OEM NiMH that came with my HP. With credit card and HP part number and SKU in hand, I called the HP store. I was transferred to literally 5 different people before I just gave up. I never did get a new battery, living with the ~40 minute degraded life of the NiMH for the next couple months.
I've had great success with their printers, though. I still think at the mid-to-high business end, they're very solid machines. I recently worked at an office that used Ricoh's, and never again with I touch Ricoh printers. They can't even get simply LDAP right...
It doesn't matter. Judging by the trends in HP CEOs, Darl will only last 2 months. He will be replaced by Kim Jong Il, who will last a mere 3 weeks (and leave with a $100m golden parachute). The next CEO will be fired before she arrives in the building, and the one after her will be given her golden parachute before being offered the job. After that, things are going to get really bad...
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The AC above made fun of Slashdotters' business savvy, in a discussion about HP, who have shown they can't run a business to save their lives. It doesn't matter about how decent their PCs are if their boardroom antics threaten to cripple that; they're even planning to divest that division.
As for local white box PC clone shops, apparently they're about as likely to be around next year as HP (and especially its PC division) is, probably more likely even.
That said, it is terribly sad to be thinking of HP in this way.
The HP you're thinking of is still around, it's called "Agilent" now.
PCL works as well as postscript.
The point is to avoid printers that require binary drivers or which try to leech off the system CPU to do the rasterization. Printers that do their own rasterization are not that much more expensive.
Personally I have an HP LaserJet 1200. It's served me well for many years, though it's cartridges are getting pretty pricy nowadays. Even with the price increases, though, it's still a lot cheaper to run than any inkjet I've ever seen.
When shopping for a printer, check the pricing and page counts on the cartridges. There are some real ripoffs out there. For example, one of the Xerox printers I looked at had cartridges that cost more than the printer itself!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The AC above made fun of Slashdotters' business savvy, in a discussion about HP, who have shown they can't run a business to save their lives. It doesn't matter about how decent their PCs are if their boardroom antics threaten to cripple that
This discussion began with "I won't purchase an HP device", I think it is reasonable to return to that point. Regardless of the antics of the executives and board members *if* the folks in operations build a decent PC it remains a decent PC.
Over the decades I have not needed support from a PC vendor other than the occasional driver on a website. YMMV of course. I am writing as an individual not someone managing an IT department.
Even if divested the new owner will most likely honor warranties, offer drivers, etc. As I think Lenovo does for old IBM ThinkPads.
Regarding ineptitude, my point is that I really only care if the folks in engineering and operations are inept.
Even if divested the new owner will most likely honor warranties, offer drivers, etc. As I think Lenovo does for old IBM ThinkPads.
There's no guarantee of that, and in fact there's been plenty of cases where companies have shut down operations of a department and left their customers in a lurch. I saw this when I worked for Freescale and they shut down our division, screwing over all the customers who had designed their parts in and had millions of them installed around the world.
Regarding ineptitude, my point is that I really only care if the folks in engineering and operations are inept.
Totally irrelevant. It doesn't matter how great the engineers are when the upper management of the corporation lays them all off by surprise, as happened to me at Freescale, and happens all the time in tech companies.
Then when your cheap crap won't work under Linux, a new version of Windows, or OS/X, don't come whining to slashdot that there are no drivers available.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.