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Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two

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Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two

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Not sure. A lot of the success of Samsung in the smartphone market is due to vertical integration. They save around 10-15% of bill-of-materials cost reduction due to this, they sometimes have unique components(like being first with HD-oled display), they have more control over manufacturers(as a condition for using a Qualcomm processor, they wanted the processor to be made at a Samsung fab), They are less exposed to…

Indeed, you are bringing very interesting points: - vertical integration (and tighter control over quality / schedules) for technology companies, and - size/scale as an advantage in Marketplace. We have seeing both of these in play, not just with Samsung: Apple is designing their own CPUs, and you can argue they leverage their size to help iTunes and Apple Pay businesses. Still, there are counterexamples: NVIDIA (and…

It can have its downsides. For example Nvidia didn't manage to push 16nm chips into their latest Maxwell cards because plants that they use for manufacturing were already booked ahead. Intel on the other hand use their own plants and can decide things more flexibly.

Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two

#24

The most amazing thing for me of the piece is the realization that HP still had $110B+ in revenue last year - its a useful reminder to us (put myself squarely in this category) of some of the behemoths in the valley that get short shift at times in the "Silicon Valley" PR ecosystem. There's apparently some interesting research still going in HP labs - one smart friend moved out here to work on Memristors with them (o…

Well, they are the 3rd largest in revenue in the IT / Software services segment after IBM and Fujitsu.

Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two

#28
The argument against unbundling a couple years ago was that the server/desktop divisions were able to leverage the volume they purchased hardware on, and the obvious synergy in having the desktops/printers open up a channel for servers and software services. Not to mention the value in having a single sales, finances, sales, ordering, procurement, manufacturing division.

I'm wondering if this argument has changed? Looking very forward to hearing what the rationale is.

Re: Hewlett-Packard Plans to Break in Two

#30
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP is so far behind Samsung in the consumer market that it hurts thinking about it :-). They failed at smartphones and tablets, their computers are kwap, the printers are absolutely awful. Their strength is (was?) enterprise and business hardware from what I can tell.

A relative of mine with credible information tells me HP is apparently losing a bunch of ground in the server market because of low build quality. HP's trying to compete on prices by slashing them, but their deployments are just that bad.

They also made a huge bet on Itanium which obviously didn't pay off. HP, along with Intel, has arguably recovered from that strategic decision, but a huge amount of money and corporate energy went into running that play. If that money and energy had gone into other things, HP might well be in a better overall place today.
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