“Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, has said that it will take a long time to get the company on the right course,” Quentin Hardy reports for The New York Times. “The quarterly results released Thursday underlined that a recovery was still in the distance.”
“Ms. Whitman also said she would lay off 11,000 to 16,000 employees at the company, in addition to the 34,000 jobs it already said would be cut,” Hardy reports. “At the end of 2013, HP employed about 317,500 people globally.”
“‘The longer we’re here,’ Ms. Whitman, who became chief executive in September 2011, said in an interview after the earnings release, ‘the more we realize about the business processes. It’s the normal course of business; it’s never easy,'” Hardy reports. “HP, until recently the world’s largest technology company in terms of revenue, has been battered by deep changes in both consumer and business behavior. Sales of personal computers, its largest area of business, have been hurt in recent years by competition from tablets and smartphones.”
MacDailyNews Take: Read: iPhones and iPads and assorted knockoff leeches.
Hardy reports, “Ms. Whitman said she had ‘a pipeline of innovative products’ across a number of areas, along with ‘a very compelling offering in the cloud.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Fewer people will need them. And this transformation is going to make some people uneasy… because the PC has taken us a long way. They were amazing. But it changes. Vested interests are going to change. And, I think we’ve embarked on that change… We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it’s uncomfortable. – Steve Jobs, June 1, 2010
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. – Steve Jobs, June 12, 2005
Good luck to upwards of 50,000 HP employees affected. May the uncomfortable changes you now face propel you to far better stead in the very near future.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Leaders tend to build moats to protect their current assets and power … until the moat runs dry.
Creators look for new innovations to answer customer needs.
Customers rule; not leaders.
What is it that makes HP unique in the crowded PC world? Nothing really at this point.
Perhaps their glorious past.
HP has been making computers longer than (correct me if I am wrong) any of the current players.
I had a lot of respect for them until Carly Fiorina became CEO
Unfortunately for Ms. Whitman, she doesn’t seem to realize that as long as HP’s consumer products (PC’s & tablets) are shackled to MS OS’s, this will continue to be ‘standard operating procedure’ at HP.
For those HP customers too stubborn and/or cheap to invest in a Mac, there are a few nice free Linux alternatives. It’s just too bad that HP won’t preload any of those OS’s onto their products (other than servers) and wean themselves, and their customers off of the MS tax.
Hopefully, she’ll get a clue before she has to fire more people. HP’s PC business doesn’t have to go the way of the Sony Vaio. Yet.
HP should take a leaf out of IBM’s book and leave the desktop/laptop PC business.
I’m a fan of the company and its future is in progressing some of the more advanced switch designs (such as the modular switches that can contain what are effectively small IvyBridge computers that can boot into hypervisors), its converged network businesses – which it should expand to include HDBaseT – by buying someone like Lightware – and the blade and virtualised storage businesses.
Nearly everything else in their portfolio is under too much competitive pressure.
This come as a shock to some but he PC business is going nowhere. Remember the paperless office. HP has been lead by incompetent idiots for some time now.
Apple, let HP load OS 10 on their computers and kill off Microsoft and the rest of the competition in one big sweep.
SJ already tried that with Sony. Sony turned Steve down.
Apple is too big now. No other PC boxer will *ever* get that opportunity. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
With the advent of the iPhone & iPad, people are beginning to awaken from a 20 year stupor and realize that they don’t *need* MS bloatware to do ‘serious’ computing, or even casual computing. They are fleeing the PC in droves and most Wintel boxers are in a panic.
In biz speak: “They don’t understand the current underlying dynamics of the market.”
Expect so see a 20-40% drop in PC shipments over the next 3-5 years. Windows will become a niche OS and those PC boxers that survive will have to switch to another OS to make it profitable for them.
It’s gonna take a couple more years to hit a critical mass, but once it does, it will hit like a Tsunami and those caught in the wake will be devastated.
Maybe it is about time for HP to stay clear of the more volatile, low margin PC & printer end of the business. It is too bad that it is too late for them to get back to their roots and concentrate on the high margin commercial and industrial test equipment business that they and Tektronix totally dominated for many decades. They are stuck battling for the scraps with all the other peddlers of junk Windows PCs and other low margin commodity products. My heart bleeds . . .
HP was once a great company. Even the young Jobs admired it.
Recently though it’s been rife with problems and political in-fighting, a number of CEOs removed etc. Whitman used to be a Board member who supposedly agitated for the last CEO to be kicked out. She’s clever , one of the richest women in California but political (ran for Governor ), but normal ‘cleverness’ isn’t enough against the mighty machine Jobs built or the sleaziness of Google and Msft. (Msft’s Windows OEM policy over the years drained all the profits to Msft instead of HP, Dell etc).
HP bought Palm and WebOS and got Jon Rubinstein. WebOS built by ex Apple staffers was pretty good but I think political wars destroyed all chances of them being used properly. Rubinstein left.
‘Tis true you need all of the correct corporate culture structure in place and leaders who recognize great coming technology and what can be done with it in just the right way to succeed which is why so many FAIL. Ain’t easy, making Steve Jobs more the miracle. Unbelievable the total retards who don’t give Jobs credit for this crucial competitive ability when 99.999999999999% of humanity doesn’t. You don’t have to invent the technology to have true vision to see how the pieces should be put together. God help us if only the engineers got to invent, design and market this stuff.
Retards? Really? My sister died from cerebral palsy. Thanks for reminding me.
My 16 year old granddaughter who we adopted HAS cerebral palsy. Thanks for reminding ME.
It’s become politically correct to not use the word “retard” describing learning disabled people but I thought it appropriate in this case as in retarded in their thinking. Defined as “characterized by a slowness or limitation in intellectual understanding and awareness, emotional development, academic progress, etc.” That certainly describes a lot of Apple haters.
If really true I’m sorry for your sibling loss to CP.
“And that describes Apple haters”? What about Google haters? What about Microsoft haters? What about Android haters? Your excuse to use the word retard is disingenuous. It’s a lame excuse for calling people names just because they don’t think like you. Some people like Apple. Some people don’t. Not everyone thinks the same. But it’s no reason, and there is no excuse, for calling those who think differently than you a retard. You’re a poor excuse for a human being.
Yeah REALLY!
I’m not trying to describe different groups of people, just Apple Haters, what’s your problem? Criminy are YOU all over the map.
I’m not apologizing for using the word “retarded” (aka geektards in this case) either and I don’t give a damn about your opinion because it’s just YOUR misguided bleeding heart scatterbrained opinion that you’ve been taught by other equally clueless souls. I refuse to take the most disingenuous road traveled of the PC loving dimwit retards like you out there. It’s sad how little you understand things and how you throw a tantrum and become abusive if you don’t get your PC way. Typical and loathsome behavior of your type.
Look in the mirror and you’ll see the absolute most truly heinous and sad example of homo sapiens behavior. Have a great weekend, really!
Political Correctness is bringing this country to its knees.
So sad. We always looked up to HP as making all the best equipment. I was awestruck when I first drove through the South Bay and saw HP signs on buildings.
HP and Microsoft are in the same boat – personal technology purchases are no longer tied to business choices and democratization of technology choices in business are hurting their long term prospectus for end users. Consumers are flocking to different platforms where these companies have yet to make an impressionable dent.
Meg Whitman hasn’t got a clue about the world of Software and hardware. Not a clue. She is just a suit who will destroy the company. Why did they let Palm OS go down when they paid so much for it?
Whitman is a fearful little suit with zero ideas.
I used to work for HP as a contractor. I feel that Meg Whitman has been doing an excellent job. I remember when she spearheaded the release of the first android-based touchscreen pc replacement. Ms Whitman knows where the company must go. HP needs to be agile as it once was.
You go Meg!!! Got the number up to 50,000 jobs slashed !! The BESTreport you will be able to announce before the board blows you up – EPS- $15/Quarter… Total Corp. employees = 4.