HP CEO Meg Whitman has made the decision to keep the PC division of the company. Whitman addressed the decision in a conference call on Thursday stating that, "HP is committed to [Personal Systems Group (PSG), HP's computer arm], and together we are stronger."
Whitman is the newly appointed CEO of HP and it seems that keeping the PC division of the company is a priority to her. The previous CEO, Léo Apotheker was driven to turn HP into the next IBM by distancing themselves from PC sales and focusing on business and enterprise customers. The truth of the matter is that a great deal of people associate HP with a home computer. In addition, IBM and Dell have the other computing market so cornered that it would be challenging for HP to make any headway there.
It seems that Whitman recognizes that the PSG is an important part of HP's business. On Thursday's conference call, she stated;
"HP and PSG are better together. A separation would not create incremental shareholder return or customer value... At the end of the day the costs and risks of a separation are simply greater than any value we could create."
HP also released a statement about the decision to keep their PC business. That statement addressed some of the business evaluation that was done and points out the strength of HP's PC sales.
Whitman also unveiled another interesting tidbit on Thursday's phone call. The company will continue to be involved in the tablet market. The future of WebOS itself was not addressed, but Whitman made it clear that they were going to stay in that market and "going to be there with Windows 8." To me, that implies that HP will continue to make tablet hardware, but depend on Windows 8 as their tablet OS.
That decision actually makes a great deal of sense. Focusing on manufacturing hardware instead of trying to compete in an already crowded tablet OS market is a good decision for HP. How do you think all of this is going to work out for HP? Do you think it's less doom and gloom for the company now? Let us know in the comments.
