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HP Plans To Cut Product Lines; Company Turnaround In 2016
dcblogs writes "Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman told financial analysts today that it will take until 2016 to turn the company around. Surprisingly, Whitman put some of the blame for the company's woes on its IT systems, which she said have hurt its internal operations. To fix its IT problems, Whitman said the company is adopting Salesforce and HR system Workday. The company also plans to cut product lines. It said it makes 2,100 different laser printers alone; it wants to reduce that by half. 'In every business we're going to benefit from focusing on a smaller number of offerings that we can invest in and really make matter,' said Whitman."
...all I can say is sell your HP stock! They're doomed.
One of the first things Steve Jobs did upon his return to Apple in the 90s was kill off all the random, overlapping, redundant, confusing product lines... Which each cost money to develop, produce, support and market. He drew a cross on the whiteboard and wrote "pro laptop" in one corner, "consumer laptop" in another, pro desktop and consumer desktop in the others. And that was their strategy. The point was to FOCUS a company that had lost its way, and HP certainly looks like a company that has lost its way.