14 DAY TRIAL // The PC market continues to be led, so to speak, by Hewlett-Packard, but HP isn't really attached to that particular market, not as much as people might think. That is why the choice to cut funding to the PC division isn't completely shocking.
HP has decided to divert resources away from the personal computer division and use them for smartphones and tablets instead.
“We are not incrementally changing the business, we are shifting resources from PCs to tablets, from one operating system to another, from one kind of chipset to another,” said Meg Whitman, chief executive officer of HP, during the Morgan Stanley technology, media & telecom conference.
Right now, smartphones are a long-term project for HP, and they will not involve webOS like in the past. That software is passing to LG and will be used in smart TVs instead.
HP is admitting to its previous failure to create smartphones viable from a marketing standpoint.
As such, it needs money to make some good ones, and to improve its tablet business, maybe increase its technological and economic acumen. That is why the resource shifting is taking place.
“The mission in my area is to make HP a leader in the tablet space and eventually smartphones. Certainly it is not a short term aim [to lead in phones],” said Alberto Torres, the head of HP’s mobile business unit, in an interview with Techradar website.
“It is not something we're looking at for this year. Without looking at specific dates, we are actively looking at our options in that market.”
More and more it seems as though HP is doing what it said it would do back in 2011, only not as quickly.
Under Leo Apotheker's leadership, the company was about to leave the PC market for good, and make some other financially painful business decisions.
Many of them have been reversed upon Meg Whitman's employment, but it seems that the retreat from the PC industry is still happening, albeit much more slowly.