HP is Tech's New Top Dog? 192
bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek argues that HP is the new Big Blue: 'Now, tech is about to get a new biggest behemoth. It's HP. The Palo Alto, Calif., PC and printer giant had higher sales than IBM last quarter, and analysts project it will finish 2006 with greater annual sales than Big Blue for the first time ever: $91 billion for HP vs. $90.5 billion for IBM. The reason HP pulled ahead is simple: IBM last year sold off its $11 billion PC business to Lenovo Group Ltd. But, because the companies have chosen fundamentally different paths, with HP aggressively going after consumers while IBM focuses on corporations, HP is expected to grow faster than IBM in coming years. Since both use blue in their logos, you might say there's a new Big Blue in the house.'"
Carly, carly, carly... (Score:5, Insightful)
She was certainly vilified when they ran her out of the corner office. If it turns out that her years were the ones that built the foundation on which a renewed greatness was built, will anybody remember?
Be careful. (Score:2, Funny)
Uh, don't you mean (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyway this is interesting but isn't such a big deal to me perfectly. Nearly all the HP products I care about went to Agilent...
Re:Carly, carly, carly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would you like to have a 40% profit on 1 billion or a 1.4% profit on 10 billion in sales?
Re:Carly, carly, carly... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know where people get the idea that sales matter much. Profit is the point of business. Go talk to Amazon about it. $9 billion in sales last year, but they would have been better off stuffing their money into Certificates of Deposit. I know people with salaries higher than Amazon's earnings and they're only considered upper middle class these days.
I'd invest in the local video outlet with sales of only $9 million b
Re:Carly, carly, carly... (Score:2)
Over 2 billion dollars a year [google.com] (AMZN's gross profit last year) is upper middle class now?
Jesus. I must be at the level of a worm if that is the case.
Re:Carly, carly, carly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Carly had reached the point that she was a perpetual distraction, everyone was talking about her more than HP, so I would be inclined to say HP is doing better because she is gone. She was a one women wrecking crew for morale at HP, and her blatant elitism is offensive to most. In particular employees hated her when she was laying them off but buying Gulfstreams, having HP pay to move her yacht from East to West coast, and on perpetual company funded jet setting trips with celebrities mostly to build her political career. She acted more like a Duchess than a business person.
Her most famous quote "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore. We all have to compete for jobs.", while probably true is a purely stupid thing for a CEO of an American company, with American workers, dependent on sales to a lot of American geeks to say out loud.
Re:Carly, carly, carly... (Score:2)
That means she has a negative networth well into the billions.
So if you ever feel down and broke just think you are worth hell of alot more than Carly Fiona.
Re:Carly, carly, carly... (Score:2)
Its doubled since the was ousted!
"That means she has a negative networth well into the billions.
Excepting of course that her severance package was worth $42 million which makes her worth a hell of a lot more than you or me.
I see in the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on her that a couple of big institutional investors have filed a civil suit against HP because her golden parachute exceeded HP's cap on executive compensation.
She is also raking it in from serving on a b
Carly turned a failing $40M PC business into..... (Score:2)
Re:Carly turned a failing $40M PC business into... (Score:2)
Re:Carly turned a failing $40M PC business into... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Carly turned a failing $40M PC business into... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Carly, carly, carly... (Score:2)
That is kind of illogical.
It seems more logical that the company improved because of her firing.
And she did almost kill the company with the merger with compaq... Then ended up doing away with most of that corpse before they were able to recover.
What about Hurd? (Score:3, Interesting)
Fiona focused on screwing the engineers and developers and rewarding the sales department whenever something good or innovative happened. Alot of good people left and were undervalued. What a shame?
Hurd at NCR was used to having multiple products unrelating and knowing how to make money off them. HP refocused their strategy with selling computers to neophites and including software for pictures and video editing and reduci
hmm... (Score:2)
Their consumer stuff is crap. But I guess Dell's is even worse.
Re:hmm... (Score:2)
Many analysist think HP beat Dell because they now include software for photo and video management not to mention their laptops are great. Especially their compaq line.
Some of their printers have went down in quality but htey are going back up again.
Oddly Dell which used to make reliable quality systems is following the mistakes of old HP and gateway with crappy products in order to save a few bucks for the bean counters. Will these companies ever learn?
Re:hmm... (Score:2)
Yay. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yay. (Score:2)
Umm... Dell?
Re:Yay. (Score:2)
They didn't help Apple... [appleturns.com]
time will tell (Score:1)
time will tell if there's a new big blue.
the key word is consistantcy.
Re:time will tell (Score:1)
Well duh... (Score:4, Informative)
Good riddance Carly! You destroyed a good engineering house almost single-handedly!
Compaq is to HP what Etch-A-Sketch is to art...
Re:Well duh... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well duh... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well duh... (Score:2)
Our test labs at work are filled with Evo 510CMTs (more than 50), and while we have had a couple hard drives go bad, it's certainly not enough for me to suspect any design flaws regarding airflow. And HP overnighted replacements, so I really can't complain. Any company (like HP) will have some percentage of OEM supplier (like Maxtor) component failures.
;)
Now, if you want to gripe about 510s, how about only having 2 DIMM slots instead of 4?
Re:Well duh... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess you haven't seen the Integrity line then. Serious performance, blows away both the Sun and IBM UNIX systems. Superdomes rock.
itanic integrity (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:itanic integrity (Score:2)
Re:itanic integrity (Score:2)
Re:Well duh... (Score:2)
Want stagnant? Talk Sun. What have they done with their Enterprise in the last 4 years? Dual-core, whoop-de-doo. Performance is still in the toilet. Hell, you STILL can't get decent IO on the E25k! (66mhz bus, max. yuck.)
Wait till you see Montecito. I have, and it's impressive.
SX2000 is pretty incredible. Performance is stellar. The Integrity line is anything but stagnant.
And for OpenVMS? I think you need to check your support agreements there,
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Well duh... (Score:2)
Re:Well duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
HP everything never came back. Printers, computers, notebooks...designed well, ran well. The only thing that ever really sucked was their digital cameras.
What Carly destroyed was the Engineering genius that used to work there. Just as well, many of them now work for Google or Apple.
HP used to be an envious place to work for if you were an engine
laughable (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:laughable (Score:2)
Companies sell items that cost $3 to make for $90, and you're suggesting that consumers are leeches? The entire call center industry is tuned to deal with most troubles in a single, short call. It's called a one-and-done. This is where most calls end. The few that go beyond this to a case or commitment or call transfer and analyzed ad nauseum until they can be made one and dones.
Just because you are personally high maintenance doesn't mean most are leeches. May I remind you that you are a lawyer? Haven't yo
Re:laughable (Score:2)
Also, it is interesting how all these "free market" people are the first to start complaining when things don't go their way. Wah, wah - the airlines need another bail out! Wah, wah, supporting our crappy and poorly designed products costs too much, please let us not honor our warranty! It is all the customer's fault that our shit doesn't work! Wah!
Fucking babies. They should have le
Re:laughable (Score:2)
So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see a lot of "new era for HP" in this story, nor do I see a lot of strategy for success. What I do see is that HP, which was once one of the leaders in technology R&D, has settled into a role where it's fundamentally a printer company.
Am I missing something?
Danger for HP (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, once upon a time HP made great printers. Plenty of LaserJets still in use today. But nowadays you're more likely to find out that your HP printer is slow, noisy, requires a 30MB driver download that's buggy as all hell, and breaks in under a year.
Re:Danger for HP (Score:2)
Re:Danger for HP (Score:4, Insightful)
It actually is 30MB... of RAM!
Our HP Color Laserjet 2550L has, as many devices do, a web-based interface. Except this printer has no network support. How, then, does it have a web interface?
Because the driver installs a web server on your machine!
And guess what? The web server is written in Java! So the driver installs Java on your machine!
Of course, they both autostart as services. That's well over thirty megabytes of RAM, consumed constantly, to support what looks like a 45k HTML web app with a trivial USB backend to talk to the printer.
Utterly, utterly despicable.
--
Dum de dum.
Re:Danger for HP (Score:2)
the perfect storm (Score:2)
I'm in safe-mode here, my options for screen resolution are
Don't agree (Score:3, Informative)
Much more than can be said of Canon, or Lexmark, or many other inkjet vendors.
Have been perfectly happy with my all-in-one inkjet / copier / scanner since day one, and I never had any problems whatsoever getting ever piece of functionality to run under Ubuntu, Fedora C
Re:Danger for HP (Score:2)
I've recently picked up a pair of older laserjets - a LaserJet 4L and a 5mp. $5 apiece. The 4L needs a new cartridge, the 5mp needs a little grease. I talked to a guy at a computer shop who used a 4L of his own for printing invoices: "the thing's built like a mack truck, take care of it and it'll go forever."
The 4L is dated October 1993, "Made in U.S.A. from foreign and domestic components." Don't see that anymore.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just one thing... Laser printer technology is improving, and becomming much cheaper. With consumer-level color laser printers comming on the market, as well as HP's now poor reputation in printers, their high-margin ink business looks like it will dry up soon (no pun intended).
And one more thing on the subject... Damn how I hate Epson.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Only one Big Blue (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only one Big Blue (Score:2)
And HP would probably have do it with relabeled IBM hardware... seeing as how printers, scanners, and fax machines can't do that kind of stuff. Or help smash atoms. Or help decode the human Genome. Comparing HP to IBM is like comparing IBM to Lockheed Martin. A little similair, but not so much. I wonder when S
Tops? (Score:2)
Re:Tops? (Score:2)
Re:Tops? (Score:2)
IBM is still killing them in market cap (Score:5, Informative)
HP [google.com] Market Cap: $84.3B
IBM has refocused itself to a large degree as a service company, whereas HP still relies on shipping units.
In any event, neither company holds a candle to MSFT or GOOG in terms of market cap, and those are really the "top dogs of tech" if you want to use a clumsy phrase. HP is certainly more of a "top dog" in hardware, but who cares about that?
Re:IBM is still killing them in market cap (Score:5, Interesting)
Google has done some cool stuff, no doubt, but their contributions to the tech world are a mere blip on a timeline that has IBM footprints all over it. Not that that's Google's fault, they're a relatively new company, we'll have to wait and see how long they remain relevant for.
MS certainly is a top dog, although one can argue over the value of some of their contributions, everyone else definately pays attention to what they're doing. I don't think the average techie is particularly concerned with HP's upcoming ideas/products. But I will agree with the article summary on one point, their logo is definitely blue. Good catch on that one.
Re:IBM is still killing them in market cap (Score:2)
Re:IBM is still killing them in market cap (Score:2)
Re:IBM is still killing them in market cap (Score:2)
Re:IBM is still killing them in market cap (Score:2)
MSFT sure, but Googles market cap is 118B.
Re:IBM is still killing them in market cap (Score:2)
Oops. I was channeling their market cap from January
Re:IBM is still killing them in market cap (Score:2)
But what makes a "Top Dog"? (Score:2)
If your were going to a technology based war.... (Score:3, Insightful)
HP or IBM?
Personally, IBM research and development puts me in a constant state of awe. I believe they have some of the most brilliant minds in the world pushing the boundries of science. Maybe thier end products don't always reflect the level of R&D invested, but don't kid yourself... the last thing HP wants is IBM's full, undivided attention at it's market share.
IBM's strength is in it's diversity. Just because they cut PC's to Lenovo doesn't mean anything about the future of the companies presence in the future technology market.
Remember this little gem?..... http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportat ion/index.html [ibm.com]
Re:If your were going to a technology based war... (Score:2)
Re:If your were going to a technology based war... (Score:2)
All the Notes developers always *say* that. Then you go to the website, and what does it talk about? Email, calendaring, email again, look it competes with Exchange, email, etc.
So in other words, if IBM *sells* it as an email program, and it's terrible at email (which it is,) then they're selling a crappy product. Period. I don't care what Notes developers think it's supposed to be used for, but IBM *clearly states* that i
Revenue != profit (Score:3, Interesting)
HP deserves to win over IBM (Score:4, Interesting)
-HP's boot way faster
-HP's have sane BIOS's. IBM's have text-based, very slow BIOS's.
-HP's break down less often. IBM's have more fragile hardware.
-When HP's do break down, the fix is always way faster and straightforward.
-IBM tech support guys need to visit us so often that there is a desk dedicated to them!
-HP's report hardware errors in plain english, IBM error codes always are obscure, like 20EE000B (which means "no bootable disk found")
-HP's website is better when you're searching for updates and such
Re:HP deserves to win over IBM (Score:2)
We're talking about servers. You shouldn't be booting these often enough that the boot time matters.
-HP's have sane BIOS's. IBM's have text-based, very slow BIOS's.
"text-based" BIOS? As opposed to those lovely GUI AMI BIOSs of the mid-90s? Someone brought that abomination back?!
You're a server admin. If navigating a textual interface bothers you, I shudder to think how you react to a real problem. Oh, and "big iron servers" don't come with anyting called a "BIOS".
I'll agree with you tha
Re:HP deserves to win over IBM (Score:2)
Re:HP deserves to win over IBM (Score:2)
When I needed to update the HP blade enclosures, I had to install windows on a server in the rack to run the update program, which sucks because it was only running SAP on 64bit SUSE.
Re:HP deserves to win over IBM (Score:2)
A friend of mine got an ancient HP 486 server, and we decided to wisit HP's website. The latest BIOS for that server released in 2001 (the server was made in 1994 or something like that). Usually hardware companies like ASUS, Gigabyte etc. release new bioses and drivers no more that a year after a product is released, so I'd say HP had excellent support, at least for servers.
Oh, and my HP Laserjet (made in 1995) still works perfectly on any OS,
Re:HP deserves to win over IBM (Score:2)
The difference is this (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm curious... (Score:2)
I cringe to think that HP is pulling ahead due to some kind of brand loyalty among consumers. Their consumer line of products is probably the worst you can buy at major retailers. I replaced my PSC 1310 quickly after I found that HP's OS X drivers put a line in
What "big blue" means.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Next Big Thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the next big thing in computing and technology? Would either HP or IBM or even Intel recognize it if they saw it? I doubt it. There is something about becoming a behemoth that prevents a company from seeing fast moving trends or foresee future ones. Or, if they do see it, they are too slow to respond in a timely manner. It has something to do with bureaucracy and the inevitable proliferation of internal operating rules. IMO, IBM and HP should create small quasi-independent research labs and give them the task of finding the next big thing. And I would tell them to look for solutions to current insolvable huge problems in the industry, such as the software reliability crisis. Indeed, the first company to come up with a solution to this problem (and obtain the lion share of the IP) is guaranteed to dictate the course of the computing industry for decades to come. One man's opinion.
Re:The Next Big Thing? (Score:2)
These sound like kegger facts to me. Would you care to point out the "next big things" that HP/IBM are missing out on?
Re:The Next Big Thing? (Score:2)
I know one. It's called "signal-based, synchronous software model" as opposed to our current algorithmic model. But then again, IBM and HP are not alone. The entire industry seems to be in a coma in this regard, although a few people are beginning to wake up. Essentially, we've been doing wrong ever since Lady Ada wrote the first table of instructions (algorithm) for Babbage's analytical engine. I've made myself a lot of enn
Re:The Next Big Thing? (Score:2)
You called that one spot on. See, big companies by definition are slow, lumberin
I have to ask... (Score:2)
Wow. $91 billion in printer ink refills? (Score:2)
But what do they _do_??? (Score:3, Insightful)
They nearly created the printer market, and now their printers are crap.
They've only released one new RPN calculator, and it's...questionable.
They're actively trying to kill off the HP-UX server/OS line.
They've already killed off the PA-RISC processor line.
All of their worthwhile tech gear got spun off as Agilent.
All they do now is make crappy printers and passable PCs in server cases. That's great--I'm sure they'll make tons of money grinding out crap without doing any basic research anymore, but it's lousy for the industry.
I don't think that HP will ever recover from Carly F. She destroyed the company and is still running free on the streets.
Cute article but HP still looses (Score:3, Insightful)
1) That article is based on estimates. We'll see what happens at the end of the year.
2) If I sold a $100 lead weight to everyone on the planet would it make me a technology leader? Sales is an arbitrary statistic and probably one of the worst. Why not use profit margin or return on investment?3) How about patents?
4) How about leading-edge custom processor design. IBM owns this generation of game consoles (Wii, ps3, xbox360 processors are all being designed at IBM). Why? IBM has an entire service organization that will build you your very own custom processor and will let you be as hands-on or as hands-off as you want. And they win awards for doing it!
All you can see from this article (Score:2)
weird numbers (Score:2)
Re:HP Computers (Score:2)
Actually, their corporate-grade stuff is of very high quality. IMHO Second-to-none for servers and workstations.
Their consumer-grade stuff is crap.
Re:HP Computers (Score:2)
If I buy a computer with their name on it, they get the credit and the blame for how the hardware performs.
If I'm recommending whether the company should buy from one place or another, I'll consider recommendations from various sources, buy I weigh my own experiences more heavily.
If they sell me crap, then I will consider them to be vendors of crap.
I used to consider HP the most solid company around, based largely on an old HP RPN calculator. That
Re:HP Computers (Score:2)
I hope HP doesn't become a big name in computers, because it is my experience that their computers are of poor quality.
The two biggest sellers of PCs are Dell and HP. Dell is the only one (slightly) bigger than HP and coincidentally are about the only one with worse reliability most years according to consumer reports. The moral of this story, sell cheap junk and people will buy it. Price is much more important than quality to most people. Hey, it works for Walmart too.
Re:HP Computers (Score:2)
HP also used to make the most reliable computers around. Carly Fiona changed this and thought the sales people were the ones responsible for products and to hell with anyone else.
Funny how joe sick pack bashes his Dell or HP but buys a Toyota or Honda and not a cheaper Kia? Kia is the cheapest right?
Will these consumers ever learn?
I guess if your ignoran
Re:HP Computers (Score:2)
I know how you feel. Once your brain gets stuck in a cliche, it's darn hard to escape. If you know a lot more about cars, you buy a more expensive car because you care more about your car than your computer, which is why you know more about cars in the first place. The converse is equally true. I spend that much more on my computer systems to get the best because my livelihood depends upon my computer systems. Whereas if my car breaks down, I miss my dental appointment.
Imagine a world where we all tot
Re:Different Businesses, different bottom lines (Score:2)
Re:Different Businesses, different bottom lines (Score:2)
Don't forget the lesson of King Gillette.
When sales start to sag, add Yet Another Blade to the razor?
Re:B.I.G. (Score:3, Insightful)
"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore." - Carly Fiorina
While working in Manhattan I saw two entire floors' worth of HP staff become unemployed with a stroke of Carly's pen. At the same time she was eliminating and/or offshoring thousands of US tech jobs, Carly Fiorina and her ilk were cruising around in Jetstreams and luxury yachts, hobnobbing with celebrities a
Re:Wait a second... (Score:2)
Re:Hp is respectable (Score:2)
That's funny. The area where I live used to have three HP plants within 10 miles or so of each other. In high school(late 80s) many of my classmates had parents that were HP employees, and had HP calculators. The parents bought them on the employee discount, which was good at the time, but most of the students had a tough time with RPN.
HP used to be a dominant employer in the area and significantly