As we’ve previously reported, it is not a good time to be a PC manufacturer at the moment. Dell is currently trying to take itself off the stock market, for example. Hewlett Packard, meanwhile, is considering nothing so drastic. Just dismembering itself.
To be fair, it’s not like there aren’t parts of Hewlett Packard that couldn’t stand to be excised. Their acquisition of Autonomy for example, which is essentially a search company, was a disaster that cost the company $8.8 billion thanks to Autonomy fudging the books. That said, currently it’s just an option the board is considering:
Investors are, according to the report, wanting more from their financial contributions and believe the PC making behemoth is worth “much more” than its recent share price. It could be that HP might be a better profit generator and money maker as separate companies rather than one giant company.
HP finds itself in the same tough spot as Dell, really. Desktop and laptop PCs are not a growth market: Tablets and smartphones are. Dell and HP, along with other companies, have not had such great success with those areas, like the aptly named Dell Streak and HP’s infamous TouchPad, which HP somehow expected to sell for $500 a pop because they’re totally Apple, right? Similarly, HP’s acquisition of Palm hasn’t really been world-beating.
So perhaps unloading some of the cruft is, in the end, not a terrible idea. Although we do have a suggestion: Instead of replacing a printer under warranty, instead a man comes to your house with a new printer and a baseball bat. You take the old printer out back and go all Office Space on it, and get the new printer in exchange.
Make YouTube videos an obligatory part of the process and you’ve got both free advertising and customers for life. You can just drop us a line, we’ll give you an address for the check.