HP surrenders as post-PC era beckons

[KizoneC]

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HP surrenders as post-PC era beckons - Yahoo!

The stunning announcement by Hewlett-Packard, the world's top personal computer maker, that it is taking steps to exit the business is the surest sign yet the post-PC era is here.
"We tend to throw the 'post-PC era' term around a lot, but it's clear that, in the wake of HP's announcement, were closer than ever to that reality," said independent technology analyst Carmi Levy.
"When a stalwart of hardware's golden age essentially walks away from the business on which it was built," Levy told AFP, "it's easy to conclude that the point of no return has been officially passed."
HP said its board has authorized the evaluation of "strategic alternatives" for its unit that could sell or spin off its PC business into a separate company.
The Windows-powered PC has been at the center of the lives of consumers for years but the arrival of powerful smartphones -- essentially pocket computers -- and touchscreen tablets like Apple's iPad has lessened its importance.
Consumers no longer need a desktop or a laptop to be connected and with the steady erosion of profit margins on PCs, HP failed to position itself with the products of the future, Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said.
"What (the post-PC era) really means is not that PCs go away but that there's a shift away from computers to computing," Rotman Epps told AFP.
"Computing happens now on many different devices and it's a much diverse landscape than one type of computer," she said. "And HP really didn't have an answer for what was next beyond the PC.
"Where there are higher margin computing products being made HP hasn't been able to succeed," the Forrester analyst said, pointing to Apple as a technology company that has been able to do so.
"Apple has been able to innovate, to sell the iPad, an all-new form factor, because of its non-hardware ecosystem," Rotman Epps said. "It has the channel in the Apple store, it has the service, and it has the software -- iTunes, the App store, the whole developer platform."
"HP took a baby step towards getting there when they acquired the Palm webOS but they weren't willing to really go full throttle and invest the capital that would have been needed to make that a successful business," she said.
California-based HP also said it was stopping production of its iPad rival, the TouchPad, and phones based on the webOS mobile operating system acquired from Palm last year for $1.2 billion.
Explaining the moves, HP chief executive Leo Apotheker said the weak economy was having an impact on PC sales but there is also a "clear secular movement in the consumer PC space."
"The velocity of change in the personal device marketplace continues to increase and the competitive landscape is growing increasingly more complex, especially around the personal computing arena," Apotheker said.
"The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations," he said.
Gartner analyst Mark Margevicius said HP's decision to sell or spin off its PC division was more about the shrinking profit margins in the PC industry than anything else.
"The PC market has transformed into a tactical, commoditized business," Margevicius said. "We're not in an era when the PC is dead. The PC market is flat but it's still a huge business.
"If the PC business was a business that generated 20 percent margins HP's not dumping their PC business," Margevicius said.
In jettisoning its PC unit, HP is taking a page from the playbook of IBM, which sold its PC business to China's Lenovo in 2004 to concentrate on servers, software and services for the enterprise market.
"In a way, these two transactions bookend the transition from hardware to a software- and services-based post-PC focus where the device that runs a service is less important -- and profitable -- than the service itself," Levy said.
"The trend has been building for years, as margins on hardware have become consistently tighter," the Ontario-based analyst said.
"While it is still possible to build a profitable business based on selling hardware, the returns -- coupled with limited future growth potential -- are often insufficient for edgy investors," he said.
"HP's move confirms, as if we weren't already convinced, that the box itself no longer matters," Levy said. "It's the value of the software that runs that box, and the services delivered via that software, that are most notable -- and profitable -- now."

[Sand Man]

Pastilan. Kaluoy gud ani... This is a sad news.

Pero as businesses goes...

Is Samsung Aiming to Snap Up HP’s PC Business?

If Hewlett-Packard sells off some or all of its non-printing consumer hardware business, the most likely buyer is probably Samsung. And the Korean hardware giant has reportedly reached out to Taiwanese notebook vendors to explore just that.

According to Digitimes’ sources, Samsung met with top HP notebook contractor Quanta Computer, as well as Compal Electronics and Pegatron Technology, to discuss outsourcing notebook orders. All three companies are based in Taiwan, while Samsung currently manufactures all of its computers in mainland China.

To these sources (upstream vendors in the PC component industry), this signals something bigger than just Samsung trolling for new subcontractors: Samsung “seem(s) like it is already in preparation to take up Hewlett-Packard’s (HP’s) PC business.”

It’s best known for its wide range of consumer electronics hardware, but Samsung already ships 10 million laptops annually (a projected 16-17 million this year), still a fraction of the 64 million PCs and 40 million laptops HP shipped in 2010. Samsung is also a leading manufacturer of memory, hard drives, screens, batteries and other computer components; control of HP’s PCs would give them a huge outlet for those products and plenty of opportunities to cut costs through vertical integration. Finally, unlike HP, Samsung is firmly committed to (and has found great success in) low-margin, high-volume hardware.

As we reported last week, rumors of an HP-Samsung deal have been circulating in Taiwan and the tech press since 2010. Reportedly, a deal to sell the PC division was in place then, but fell through; after rumors of a continued deal reemerged in March, HP flatly denied it.

Since HP’s announcement last week that it was looking to separate part or all of its Personal Services Group, speculation about a Samsung deal has started again. As ZDNet UK’s Jack Schofield writes, “Samsung may be the only PC company that has the money, that is big enough to absorb PSG, and that would actually want it”:

Acer is already struggling with falling PC shipments, Asus doesn’t have the cash, and MSI is too small. Lenovo has already taken over IBM’s PC division and doesn’t need PSG. Neither Sony nor Apple wants to be in the low-end PC businesses anyway: both target people with more money. Microsoft can’t buy PSG because it would be a giant headache, from an anti-trust point of view, and because it would be competing with its own customers (a mistake Google is making by buying Motorola’s phone division). That leaves two main options — Toshiba and Samsung — with the latter being the clear favourite.

“Or at least,” Schofield adds, “would want HP’s laptop business.” HP’s Personal Services Group is huge, much bigger than just computers, and Samsung already has substantial overlap with many of its product categories. But the long-term growth and profit prospects for products like digital cameras and desktop towers (outside of enterprise and office sales, which HP could conceivably fold in anyways) are fairly grim — which is why HP’s looking to separate from it in the first place. The future of the PC is in increasingly lightweight, portable machines — or something HP hasn’t invented yet.

(Plus, you know, whatever patents HP would part with that might help Samsung, blah lorem patents ipsum blah.)

So if Samsung takes on HP’s hardware business, they’re likely to only take or keep a piece: enough to make them a major player in computing, but no more than would drag them down like it did HP.

However, even for a company as large as Samsung, just a piece of HP’s PC business would still be a very big piece.

source

[deespter]

sayang dah... ganahan bya ta ko HP nga brand kay masaligan ba...

[immersiondepth]

so that explains the "RIP webOS" issue...

[balipseyev]

Grabe lagi ang sale ani nila sa Touchpad... barato na kaayo, kay la na customer support...

[KizoneC]

dili na jud cguro sila ka compete sa ilang mga ka atbang... sad to say HP nindot pud baya but unsaon ta man ... sundon lang nila ang gibuhat sa DELL nga baligya na lang nila sa CHINA.

[immersiondepth]

Grabe lagi ang sale ani nila sa Touchpad... barato na kaayo, kay la na customer support...

lagi boss, ~P4,500 na lang gud sa US...payts na unta 'to if naa ta'y kaila sa gawas...papalit lang ba...bahala'g wala'y customer support, mga scientist baya kaayo ang mga pinoy...

[siopao1984]

wow. suroyon ko unya ang SIM LIM SQUARE if mka kita ko marked down price sa HP Touchpad... bacin less than 200 SGD na lang... hahaha