Hewlett-Packard is a giant in the technology sector. It offers everything from consumer printers and desktops to a host of enterprise services. One area where the company has not fared well is the mobile space. Its famed iPAQ line is no more than a chapter in its history and its Palm acquisition ended in a debacle when the company cancelled its webOS device lineup months after launching. It now dabbles in smartphones and tablets but it certainly not a market leader in this area and current devices are less than impressive. Still striving to regain momentum, it appears that it now plans on splitting itself into two separate companies.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Hewlett-Packard will separate into a company focusing on consumer hardware and another on business hardware and services. The former will be known as HP Inc. and the latter will be called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Each of the two publicly traded companies will be worth about US$50 billion.
Current CEO Meg Whitman is slated to become chairman of HP Inc. and CEO of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Don Weisler, an executive on the PC and priner side, is set to become the new CEO of HP Inc.
Confirmation of the split could come as early as sometime today.
It remains to be seen if HP Inc. would become a bigger player in the mobile space in a bid to compensate for flagging traditional PC sales.
Update: Hewlett-Packard has confirmed the upcoming split:
“The decision to separate into two market-leading companies underscores our commitment to the turnaround plan,” Whitman said in the announcement. “It will provide each new company with the independence, focus, financial resources, and flexibility they need to adapt quickly to market and customer dynamics, while generating long-term value for shareholders.”
As expected, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will build upon HP’s business portfolio which includes servers, storage, networking, converged systems, services and software as well as its OpenStack Helion cloud platform. HP Inc. will take on the company’s personal systems and printing products and promises a “roadmap into the most exciting new technologies like 3D printing and new computing experiences.”
Hewlett-Packard expects that the split will be completed by by the end of the fiscal year 2015.
Sources : The Wall Street Journal // Hewlett-Packard