HP's decision to stitch together its PC and printer businesses is likely driven by cost cutting but it could bring financial benefits to channel partners. In a move first mooted by former CEO Carly Fiorina but not implemented before Mark Hurd placed his butt on the hot seat, HP yesterday confirmed the formation of the Printing …

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Thursday 22nd March 2012 12:59 GMT Anonymous Coward

"power ... negotiating rebates"

Look guys, if you think your lack of "power to negotiate rebates" with HP is your biggest problem with HP, I fear you may have misread the situation somewhat.

But then my customer experience of CPQ/HP "channel partners" in general is that most of them weren't interested in differentiating themselves on anything other than cost grounds (certainly not on skill or quality), so if they go to the wall, so be it.

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Thursday 22nd March 2012 16:26 GMT Someone Else

Anybody wanna play?

“By providing the best in customer-focused innovation and operational efficiency, we believe we will create a winning scenario for customers, partners and shareholders,” said CEO Meg Whitman.

Bingo!

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1. Friday 23rd March 2012 10:10 GMT Marvin the Martian
  
  Alternatively, they could out-engineer Apple...
  
  Where the iMac has pushed the idea of all-in-ones onto the world, quite successfully, HP could do them one better and make all-in-one desktop/screen/scanner/printers. OK maybe leave out the scanner (or make it side-feeding) to stand it closer to the wall...
  
  In my experience both HP pc's and printers break down after about 3years, so that's the synergy they were looking for.
  
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Thursday 22nd March 2012 16:48 GMT Anonymous Coward

Stupid Decision

Even MBAers who know HP's business will know that the printer business is completely different to the PC business. HP is one of the few companies who are experts in making printers and there is lots of expertise in inkjet printing, laserjet printing and all the software related to that. Think of anti-aliasing technologies and the like.

The PC business is a commodity operation - just collecting key components from AMD, Intel, Seagate, NVIDIA, Microsoft and so on and soldering them onto a board/installing on the HDD. There is only a miniscule space for innovation in PCs and no much difference between an HP PC and the competing kit from ASUS, Samsung and at least 100 more east asian vendors.

Mr Apotheker was right in his assessment that the PC business is of no value to HP, his only mistake was to talk about it in public instead of cutting a deal with somebody like Asus or Huawei and then forking over the business to them.

The "rationale" that eliminating VP posts would save a lot of money is pure BS. How much did mister Yoshi earn per year ? 5 million or 10 million ? That's irrelevant as compared to the billions in profit his business made during the last 10 years. But Ms Ebay has seen bad financials last year in printers, so she pulls a knee-yerk. FAIIIL.

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1. Friday 23rd March 2012 03:48 GMT P. Lee
  
  Re: Stupid Decision
  
  Agree... mostly.
  
  I think there is plenty of space for innovation but no-one is bothering. How about putting android/webos into laptop screens and make them detachable? How about putting ARM storage servers onto PCIe cards so disk is accessible from the network, even if the main pc is shut down? Where's the docking station with PCIex16 so I can bring my work laptop home and boot off my own disk and use a decent graphics card? Where is the beautiful screen with webcam and speakers so I don't feel the need to buy an iMac? Where is the mouse that feels nice to use but costs less than a Razer?
  
  Focus on the customer and build the product to match. Don't just churn out cheap stuff because that is what everyone else does.
  
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