HP announced today that its Personal System Group that manufacture’s PCs is here to stay. The newly hired CEO, Meg Whitman, was good on her promise to make a quick decision on it. In some respects, the decision was not all that unexpected because the PC unit was still profitable — and the logistics/supply chain model of cutting it off was just too costly. The business imploded after their announcement though; HP couldn’t sell the division and a spin-off would not have brought much to shareholders as demand for HPs plummeted.
Computers are a low-margin commodity and HP hasn’t provided any impressive designs, performance gains, or prices relative to Dell, Lenovo, and other manufacturers. It also has no mobile strategy in phones or tablets now that WebOS has crashed and burned. It also hasn’t released its vision for IT/enterprise systems and servers or what it plans on doing to become more competitive against Apple and the design bandwagon everyone else is jumping on.
