Move along, nothing to see here
Imagine being the UK personal systems head of the number one PC vendor and, while you sip your morning freshly-squeezed orange juice - expecting the announcement of another great quarter - your CEO publicly announces he wants to get rid of your division. We reckon your OJ would have ended-up all over your lovely new HP PC.
That was the scenario faced by Paul Hunter, the head of HP PSG UK and Ireland last Friday, and it's taken him nearly a week to issue a public statement on the matter.
"There's no denying that it's been a strange week at HP," conceded Hunter in a message sent to us hacks. His biggest concern has been reports that HP is exiting the PC market. "There have been a number of incorrect stories saying that HP is quitting the PC business," he said. "Let me be absolutely clear in saying that at no stage has HP said it is quitting the PC business."
No, not in those words, but let's have another look at what his CEO did say. "We see the opportunity for PSG to compete and win in the PC marketplace, and our board has authorized us to explore strategic alternatives for PSG. We intend to evaluate a range of options that may include, among others, a separation of PSG from HP through a spinoff or other transaction.
"The contemplated direction is an important component of our strategy to sharpen HP's focus on cloud, solutions and software, accessible to any type of device, while we continue to expand and leverage our strong technologies, including printing hardware, software and services."
So Hunter is right; HP hasn't said it's quitting the PC business. But it has said it's looking to spin it off and that it wants to focus on software and services. That's hardly a massive vote of confidence in the PSG is it?
This is essentially damage-limitation. Hunter presumably understands why the press has jumped to the conclusions it has, but he's keen to stress the difference between ‘quitting' and ‘thinking of quitting'. He is presumably being subjected to a flood of emails from his customers, linking to such reports, with "WTF!?" in the subject field.
"PSG is a $40B annual business," continued Hunter. "We operate in 170 countries and have more than 180,000 channel partners. Whatever the future strategy, we have a mission and responsibility to all of our employees, customers and partners to continue to deliver fantastic products."
He also touched on the webOS situation "I apologize that we have been slow to answer some of the questions around webOS. The sheer scale of interest in the discounted products took us a little by surprise. We are now working on ensuring everyone that owns a webOS device has a positive experience." HP certainly stumbled upon a great way to create an instant installed-base there.
