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HP Is Planning To Split Into Two Separate Businesses, Sources Say
mrspoonsi writes Hewlett-Packard is planning to split itself into two separate businesses, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. Sources tell the WSJ that HP will split its personal-computer and printer segments from its corporate hardware and services business. The announcement could come as early as Monday, the sources said. The company reorganized itself in 2012 under CEO Meg Whitman. That move combined its computer and printer businesses. The PC and computer segment is massive for HP. For the first six months this year, it reported $27.8 billion in revenue. That's about three times the size of HP's next biggest unit, the Enterprise Group, which makes servers, storage, and network hardware. Under the new split, Whitman would be chairman of the computer and printer business, and CEO of a separate Enterprise Group, according to one of the sources. Patricia Russo, who sits on HP's board, would be chairman of the enterprise company. The printer and PC operation would be led by Dion Weisler, a current exec in that division.
Would the Integrity line a.k.a. Itanic be a part of the latter?
The company that Bill and Dave started is still doing just fine, Its now Agilent (Life Sciences) and Keysight (Test and measurement).
http://www.agilent.com/home
http://www.keysight.com
Question is - which one does 'HP' have more faith in? The PC/printer division, or the services - isn't it the EDS/MPhasis part of the company?
Worth remembering that both the "halves" of the current HP are just the remainder of the original company after its previous split/spin-off of Agilent anyway. Agilent was arguably closer to HP's original business (i.e. test equipment and the like) than what remained of "HP" (nominally the former parent) after that.
In short, the current HP is already the result of a split, and the "new" HP will be whatever bit keeps the name, but will it have any meaning beyond a badge?
It's a similar case to Motorola, which had already split or spun-off parts of its business more than once into On Semiconductor, and a few years later into Freescale before the remaining "Motorola" split into two distinct companies with that name (one of which was later bought by Google).
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Except that new printer only has 1/3 the ink of a $30 cartridge.
HP's consumer and enterprise laptops are entirely different and seem to be designed by different companies.
The Envy, Pavilion, "Essentials" lines may appear like chinese-designed OEM machines in an HP-styles package.
The Pro*, Elite* series are very different. They have
- custom BIOS with tons of options (unlike the consumer versions with almost no options and a text-based interface like you see in cheap OEM motherboards)
- much better touchpads with really nice buttons. The consumer versions often have weird stuff like virtual buttons, buttons with a loud "click" and non-existing travel. While enterprise laptops have buttons with some travel distance and a smooth click. I can't describe it but they do have a very nice feel, somewhat closer to keyboards.
- better components. Almost every corporate laptop has Intel networking chips (or at least Broadcom). The cases don't flex as much as consumer versions.
- the Windows 8 era machines include Windows 7 AND 8 installation disks - choose whatever you like. And proper, not "single-language reduced crap with tons of Symantec/McAfee/BonziBuddy bullshit" Windows editions.
- 3-year warranty. Not even Apple offers that kind of support.