SoylentNews

HP Plans to Split into Two Companies.

posted by LaminatorX on Monday October 06 2014, @01:10PM   
from the What-about-the-calculators? dept.

AnonTechie writes:

PC and printers in one company, enterprise products and services in the other.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting ( http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/hewlett-packard-plans-to-break-in-two-1412530028-lMyQjAxMTE0OTAzNTEwNjUzWj?tesla=y ) that HP will break up into two separate companies. According to the report, the company appears ready to split into separate "Consumer" and "Enterprise" companies, with PCs and printers ending up in one company and corporate hardware and services operations going to the other. The Journal says HP plans to announce the move "as early as Monday."

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/report-hp-plans-to-split-into-two-companies/

• Wrong way round. Wrong way round. (Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday October 06 2014, @02:54PM

  by MrGuy (1007) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:54PM (#102442)

  I suspect HP is going exactly the same way IBM did. Hardware is a commodity, low margin business. There are limited opportunities to innovate. Services (especially enterprise services) are far more lucrative and a much better place to focus the company.

  This isn't HP buying EDS and then spinning it back off because it was a bad investment. This is far more likely HP buying EDS, and realizing they'd rather be EDS than the "old" HP, with its legacy of PC's and printers and other "drag on growth" items, so they decided to keep the new and jettison the old. They'll probably keep all the IP they have from their PC and especially printer business, because, woo! patent lawsuits!

  I suspect the company that keeps the HP name will be the enterprise company, made up mostly of EDS, the HP high-end big-iron hardware, the remains of HP's abortive pre-EDS services group, and maybe enterprise software. They'll sell off the PC and printers to the highest bidders, just as IBM did selling off to Lenovo and deciding they'd rather be IBM Global Services than IBM the Hardware Manufacturer.

  They're not selling off EDS. They're selling off their former core business, which has gone from "loss leader" to simply "loss."

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Interesting=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		3

• Re:Wrong way round. (Score: 1) by BananaPhone on Monday October 06 2014, @03:14PM

  by BananaPhone (2488) on Monday October 06 2014, @03:14PM (#102457)

  Spinning off the "EDS group" is akin to karma-laundering for the EDS group.

  Parent

• Re:Wrong way round. (Score: 2) by forsythe on Monday October 06 2014, @08:15PM

  by forsythe (831) on Monday October 06 2014, @08:15PM (#102606)

  I was going to make a smarmy comment about how printer ink is hardly a low margin business, but I don't think it may be so smarmy after all. Isn't HP's printer division absurdly profitable? (I can see them ditching their PC division, however.)

  Parent