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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.
The brand-new USD$100 HP 3D printer*.
* requires spools (embedded with a security chip) of "standard" PLA (with a non-standard diameter and melting point) which will be available for only USD$99 each.
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They'll call the spinoff Compaq!
The part that makes shitty consumer hardware is splitting up from the part that makes rock solid server hardware. This is an absolute dream come true!
The Server Hardware company could be called Digital.
And the consumer company could be called Compaq.
If there were to have a third company for printers - that should be called HP!
(I'm still bitter about Alpha being killed!)
From Carly Fiorina, on, hp has been lacking in leadership, and vision. Hewlett and Packard built a great company, only to have it destroyed by poseurs. Meg Whitman is the latest one - using smoke and mirrors to drive bumps in the stock price. We all know how this is going to end - eventual parting out to companies like Lenovo, Samsung - you name it. Whitman and other insiders will walk away with millions. hp's last 10 years is perfect representation of executive and Board incompetence.
If you can't figure out how to make one company successful, why double your workload?
So they're dropping their company's boat anchor (the lowest quality PCs, laptops, and printers in existence) and expecting it to float? Good luck with that.
Would the Integrity line a.k.a. Itanic be a part of the latter?
When I heard it I first thought they want to split into one company selling printers (and living on subsidies) and one selling printer ink...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Good. It's only a matter of time now until the PC unit fails and the HP name can be bought back by its proper owner Keysight.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
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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Question is - which one does 'HP' have more faith in?
Just watch and see which side they transfer all their debt to. It's a classic play called "leave your shareholders holding the bag for your mismanagement of the original company".
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?
Like Pillips and Kodak and many other "greats", HP is now only a marketing company for cheap Chinese crap designed by someone else.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
When I heard it I first thought they want to split into one company selling printers (and living on subsidies) and one selling printer ink...
When my $49 HP printer runs out of ink, the replacement ink cartridge costs $29. So instead of buying the ink, I disassemble the printer into a pile of gears, cogs, timing belts, stepper motors, etc. and sell them on eBay as "robot parts". The I use the proceeds to buy a new printer, including ink, for $49.
Except that new printer only has 1/3 the ink of a $30 cartridge.
I hope they take the founder's names off of the computer company. The last four CEOs have been an insult to Hewlett and Packard, its employees and its customers. Hewlett-Packard (now called "HP" out of shame) used to be the epitome of creativity, innovation, treating employees with respect and an "Extra Measure of Quality". Now it's nothing but a continuing estate sale of what once was a great company. The Board of Directors is to blame. The manifestation of its incompetence have been a succession of terrible CEOs (Fiorina, Hurd, Apotheker and now Whitman) who individually and collectively are incapable of understanding what is required to innovate products. The inkwell is also going dry (HP's primary source of profit was selling ink and it financed the remainder of the company). So what's left? HP Lab's funds have been cut for decades. Ink is drying up. Their PCs are designed and build by the cheapest Chinese bidder and the enterprise hardware business R&D capability has mostly walked out away out of frustration. Such a sad decay of a very, very good technology company.
The Gen9s have some of the memory tech starting in a couple of months.
I really hope they take the labs, both the ProLiants and the Integrity gear and keep them running as they have been. The Mark Hurd years were hard on them, and things fell behind. From a customer standpoint, it seems like Meg's been letting them be engineers again.
I hope those teams survive. My blades and my Integrity boxes are the only things that haven't died in my datacenter. My storage vendors haven't been remotely as solid.
My mom says I'm cool.
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.
No, Bean counters and MBAs have wrecked HP. Pointy Haired Bosses know no gender.
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