Slated for release
Both of the big US PC makers announced their quarterly earnings yesterday, and they were solid but unspectacular. HP more or less delivered as expected with revenue of $30 billion, while Dell's revenue of $15.5 billion was slightly above expectations.
"The broad-based strength of HP's Q3 performance further demonstrates the power of our strategy and the discipline of our execution," said Cathie Lesjak, HP CFO and interim CEO. "We raised our full-year outlook and are continuing to build momentum in driving out costs, investing for profitable growth and capitalizing on HP's competitive advantages in the marketplace."
"We are positioned well to continue benefiting from the global corporate refresh underway in client and enterprise systems," said Brian Gladden, Dell CFO. Neither company's share price experienced a positive reaction, however, with HP dropping a percent and Dell three percent.
In the HP conference call, a couple of questions were fielded by Todd Bradley - the EVP of HP's personal systems group - regarding the consumer notebook market. "Well, we saw some softness in our consumer notebook market; and I call it consumer notebook market," he said. "I think back-to-school started somewhat late for us, but we've certainly seen it start. Though, I think a soft beginning but overall we're seeing things are on track."
He was asked how much of that is down to tablets and what HP is going to do about it. "Well, as we look at tablet sales and slate sales that was a big part of the reason we acquired Palm. You'll see us with a Microsoft product out in the near future, and a webOS-based product in early 2011."
We've reproduced the breakdown of HP's earnings by sector and geography below, to illustrate how diversified its business is.
