Skip to main content

Whitman to settle fate of HP’s PC biz this month

meg-whitman-HP-shutterstock
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Speaking yesterday at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit in California, newly-installed Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman revealed that she plans to make a decision about whether HP will really be leaving the personal computer business by the end of the month. Whitman’s strategy is considerably accelerated than that of her predecessor, Leo Apotheker, who indicated that the HP board didn’t intend to make any final decision until the end of the year.

Hewlett-Packard is currently the world’s PC maker; however, the company announced in August that it was planning to exit the PC business entirely to focus on its enterprise services and server offerings.

The move seems nonsensical at some levels. HP scrambled up from a complicated and expensive acquisition of Compaq almost a decade ago to overtake Dell as the world’s top maker of PCs. However, while HP is making lots of computers, it doesn’t seem to be making tons of money doing it—and that’s the rub. Almost all PC makers are struggling to compete as the market gravitated first toward low-cost, low-margin netbooks (giving Acer a short-lived boost) and now seems to be gravitating away from traditional PC form factors entirely in favor of tablets and other mobile devices. A company that sells 100 PCs at a $10 profit isn’t making any more money than a company that sells a single PC for a $1,000 profit—but they have a lot more overhead. And in recent years, Apple has come to utterly dominate the consumer market for PCs with price tags over $1,000—and it also defined (and still utterly dominates) the tablet market. The result is that PC makers are increasingly squabbling over the low-cost, low-margin, commodity end of the PC business, or looking to dominate more profitable niche markets, like servers.

Should HP decide to spin off its PC business, it will still take time for the company to complete the process. At the time of the initial announcement, HP estimated it would take 12 to 18 months to finalize a separation of the PC business, if that’s the route the company chose. If Whitman and the HP board make their decision by the end of the month, spinning out the PC business will still take time, whether to set it up as a separate company or to find a buyer (or buyers) interested in taking it over. Nonetheless, Whitman’s determination to make decision sooner than later will probably help moral of people in HP’s Personal Systems Group—better to know one way or the other than to live in limbo.

However, some people want HP to stick with the computer business—and one of them is Michael Dell. Speaking at Oracle Open World yesterday, Michael Dell indicated that the PC business is still profitable, and noted that if HP were to leave the PC business it might lose economies of scale that help its business in other areas. Dell noted that 95 percent of disk drives and other components used for PCs go into desktop and notebook systems, rather than servers: if HP were to abandon its PC business, it may not be a big enough player in the components market for its servers to be competitive. However, Dell also doesn’t characterize his company as a PC maker: they’re an end-to-end solutions provider that’s increasingly focused on enterprise services and vertical markets.

[Image via Eugene Berman/Shutterstock]

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
AMD’s gaming revenue is down by 48%, and it won’t get better
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card.

AMD has made some of the best graphics cards in the last few years, and yet its gaming GPU market still appears to be fairly niche when compared to Nvidia's gigantic share. This sentiment is backed by AMD's most recent earnings call, which revealed that its gaming revenue is down by a staggering 48% year-over-year.

Things have been looking kind of grim ever since rumors started spreading that AMD may be giving up on the high-end portion of the GPU market. There have been whispers that AMD may have had a perfectly viable high-end graphics card that it decided not to launch, instead focusing on the mainstream segment. The earnings call gives some context to these rumors.

Read more
Best MacBook deals: Get an Air for $605 and save on M3 MacBook Pro
A MacBook Pro M2 sits on a wooden table with a nice bokeh background.

Apple has been in the laptop game for quite a while now, and its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lineups are some of the best laptops on the market, especially since Apple has started using its own chips. Of course, you do have to pay a premium for the brand name and the product, and if you're thinking of grabbing one of these, then you may need to rely on some solid Apple deals to get you through. That's why we've scoured some of the biggest retailers online and found the best deals we could, whether you want an early-model MacBook Air M1 or the latest M3 MacBook Pro. That said, if you're not really feeling any of these MacBooks, be sure to check out these other great laptop deals instead. To complete your full Apple suite, pair a new MacBook with AirPods deals, Apple Watch deals and iPhone deals.
Best MacBook Air (M1) deals

The Apple MacBook Air (M1) started a seismic shift for Apple being the first of its Airs to have an Apple-based processor. We took a look at the differences between the M2 and M1 and the M1 is still looking pretty great. It's also a touch nearer to affordable than anything else here. Fast yet fanless so it's silent to use, you gain an 18-hour battery life, a gorgeous looking 13.3-inch Retina display along with all the effortless style you'd expect from an Apple device. These laptops are best for students or those who want something stylish yet reasonably powerful to use on the move. Nowadays, deals are becoming a little harder to come by unless you're willing to consider a refurbished/renewed model.

Read more
Hurry! Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 have hefty price cuts today
The Surface Pro 9 in laptop mode on a table.

Microsoft's Surface devices are high-performance machines that are designed to maximize the capabilities of Windows 11. If you're on the lookout for Surface Laptop and Surface Pro deals, don't miss this chance to get a discount from Best Buy on the latest consumer models, as the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 are only available for commercial users for now. The Microsoft Surface Pro 9 is on sale for only $800, for $300 in savings on its original price of $1,100, while the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 is also down to $800, for $500 in savings on its sticker price of $1,300. You better hurry with your purchase though, as we're not sure when these offers will expire.
Microsoft Surface Pro 9 -- $800, was $1,100

Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 -- $800, was $1,300

Read more