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.

Comments

Fire the board

[onyxruby]

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.

Re:Fire the board

[laffer1]

I recommend looking at who's currently on the board at HP. It explains everything. There's a ridiculous number of hedge fund managers and similar type people. They've only got one real HP person on the board and that person is from enterprise marketing or something like that. No one on the board understands their products or what they do except possibly this marketing person.

You would think a company like HP would have at least a few people who've run tech companies on their board.

Re:Fire the board

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They really ought to experiment with outsourcing the board of directors to a call center somewhere.

It would't necessarily generate better leadership; but 8-12 incomprehensible guys allegedly named "Robert" somewhere in the far east would provide incomprehensible decisions and inconsistent directions for several factors of ten less money...

MBA bullshit.

[unity100]

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.

Oki and Xerox seem to be a better bet

[zerofoo]

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.

Re:My thoughts

[Crudely_Indecent]

I always had a rule when purchasing PCs. Now, this rule has since lost much of it's impact, since one of the manufacturers went poof, and the other two merged -

Never buy a computer with PACK/PAQ in the name. At the time, this included Hewlett Packard, Compaq, and Packard Bell

Although losing much of it's impact, the rule still stands (at least for me)

Re:BGDAAAA!!

[TheRaven64]

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...