Whatever, who cares
They key word here is "Sourced"
It is a natural progression of things, when excel mongers drive a company off the road (as per http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2081930,00.html) and replace "high cost" functions like engineering, design, etc by sourcing and clever pricing manipulation. The company usually undergoes an initial "jump" in its financials. Money is no longer wasted on "smelly engineers", innovation is outsourced to OEMs, the company is "lean" shop-n-ship shop and we can all sing, dance and enjoy the stock price rise. That lasts 5, 10 sometimes 15 years.
That is natural as this is the time it takes for the market to mature and enter into margin squeeze. After that period the margin of the shop-n-ship is squeezed and the shop-n-ship portion reduced to a "race to the bottom" scenario. At that point the only place where you can generate margin is by designing something new and by creating new product.
However, if you have "leaned-out" and sourced all of your product you no longer _OWN_ that margin. It is with the OEM+ODMs. So you have to live on shop-n-ship margin which is guaranteed to be reduced long term in a competitive market.
That is the trouble with HP - the margin-carrying parts of its PCs are now largely designed by Asus (and few other ODM/OEMs), its storage is designed by HDS, its... So it does not retain any margin from new products and its margins are only from lean shop-n-shipping which is too cut-throat.
That is why it financial results suck in an area where Lenovo, Apple, etc have managed to excel. They have kept their designs. No "sourcing". So in a market where the "shop-n-ship" part of the margin has dropped to under "commodity" levels they can still make money and lots of it.
It is a classic example of a rise in market share followed by a fall through the elimination of "what gives your company a future".
Biting the hand that feeds IT
