Silicon Valley Giant Hewlett-Packard To Split In Two: Report

[Purveyor]

Source: REUTERS

Reuters
Published Sunday, Oct. 05 2014, 6:02 PM EDT

Silicon Valley stalwart Hewlett-Packard Co, which has struggled to adapt to the new era of mobile and online computing, plans to split into two companies as it looks to put more focus on the faster-growing corporate services market, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday.

The move, which could be announced as early as Monday, would be a monumental reshaping of one of technology’s most important pioneers, which still has more than 300,000 employees and is on track to book $112-billion in revenue this fiscal year.

Under the reported plan, HP will separate its computer and printer businesses from its corporate hardware and services operations, and spin the unit off through a tax-free distribution of shares to stockholders next year.

A company spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

HP’s printing and personal computing business accounts for about half its revenue and profit, according to last quarter’s financial results. It is not clear how many of HP’s more than 300,000 staff work in each of the planned businesses.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/us-business/silicon-valley-giant-hewlett-packard-to-split-in-two-report/article20938032/

[RufusTFirefly]

1. Interesting. HP has done this before.

Some years back, it spun off its scientific instruments division as a separate company called Agilent.

[Cayenne]

4. HP sold their soul when the spun off their scientific instruments division

It was their source of excellence and their core. Now the are just a widget maker with no distinction.

[Strelnikov_]

5. Agree . . . Carly Fiorina for President!!! n/t

[customerserviceguy]

8. She screwed them up royally

Actually, she's f'd up everything she's ever touched, which included the McCain campaign, and her own for US Senate. It's always a disaster when Republicons try their hand at affirmative action.

[Populist_Prole]

2. Ah I see: The sizzle unit, and the steak unit.

[NV Whino]

3. Excellent assessment

Now, which one will Meg whatshername ruin? I mean run.

[Downwinder]

6. What are they going to call the spin off?

Compaq?

[IDemo]

7. Or Canon

[customerserviceguy]

9. May as well call it "Fail"

HP makes the worst computers I've ever had to suffer with.

[IDemo]

10. But they are the easiest to open up and work on

Their All-In-Ones have been designed by someone who apparently has had to actually add memory or replace a hard drive. Beyond that, I couldn't say.

[customerserviceguy]

11. I've found Dell machines easy to work on

Being as they're designed to be slapped together quickly to a customer's specifications, adding or changing things is quite straightforward with them. The biggest fault Dell has is customer service after the sale, and if you went to school to learn about computers like I have, then it's not a problem.

HP uses shitty parts. My inefficient company replaced all of our dependable Dells with HP's a year ago, and it's been nothing but problems. Bad NIC's, even had one hard drive completely crash only a month after my co-worker started using it. I asked the IT guy, "Western Digital hard drive?" He said, "You don't like them, eh?" I said, "You didn't answer my question." He said, "Yeah, that's right." I said, "Hope you replaced it with a Samsung." I got a shrug after that.

[IDemo]

12. I had to deploy and maintain hundreds of machines in my last job

which was in an R&D lab for the development of SSD's. Most of the PC's, laptops and AIO's I had to open up were apparently designed by a malicious mechanical engineer who felt that if 12 screws were good, 20 would be great. The HP's usually required just a few screw removals and could be opened up in seconds rather than minutes.

We generally used Western Digital HD's for all of the custom-built machines used to test SSD hardware and firmware releases. With several hundred systems, fails were rare but did occur.

I had to return a couple of Dell laptops and two or three HP systems during my time. Dell's customer service was excellent.

[MisterP]

13. Sabre?

[AdHocSolver]

14. I had the privilege of working for Hewlett-Packard many years ago.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were still managing the company at the time.

The company was one of the best, if not the best, places that I ever worked at.

The quality of the products was superb, and they treated their employees and customers very well.

From reading the company's history in Wikipedia, it seems that H-P was infiltrated and taken over in the 1990's by a bunch of vampire capitalists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard

[kwassa]

15. Packard has already been a separate company.

They made cars.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

16. UPDATE: Hewlett-Packard confirms it will split into two companies

UPDATE: Hewlett-Packard confirms it will split into two companies

10-6-14 7:13 AM EDT

By Joann S. Lublin , Dana Mattioli and Dana Cimilluca

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) on Monday said it plans to separate its personal-computer and printer businesses from its corporate hardware and services operations, the latest attempt by the technology company to improve its fortunes by breaking itself in two.

The company will make the split through a tax-free distribution of shares to stockholders by the end of fiscal 2015.

If the division goes off as planned, it would give rise to two publicly traded companies, each with more than $50 billion in annual revenue.
....

-Joann S. Lublin ; 415-439-6400; [e-mail]