EDS Acquisition Saves H-P Quarterly Results; But Profit Still Drops Sharply, Sparks More Layoffs

May 19, 2009
Without EDS, H-P financial quaterly results would have been dismal

Without EDS, H-P financial quaterly results would have been dismal

[Update] H-P said it will trim 2 percent of its 321,000 employees this year or 6,400 jobs, in addition to the already announced cuts associated with the EDS acquisition. Most the firing will happen outside the U.S. confirmed the Palo Alto, Calif.-company.

The recession is hitting H-P right at its core.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-company saw a revenue and profit decline in all of its businesses – aside of the Services division (more on that later) – including, PCs, servers, printers, software and financial services.

Even H-P’s golden egg, its Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), recorded a double digit decline in revenue (-23%), to $5.9 billion, from the same period a year ago.

On the other hand, H-P’s Services division recorded a whopping 99% increase in revenue to $8.5 billion, and an amazing 130% surge in profits, to $1.2 billion!

But the comparison is obviously flawed as H-P closed the EDS acquisition only last August and did not include EDS financial results until then.

Although H-P’s short-term outlook is still sombre, with revenue flat to down 2% sequentially, the world’s largest IT company still sees only a modest revenue drop for the year, at about 4% to 5%.


[Analysis] Microsoft Windows 7 Is Essentially Vista; But Smaller, Faster

April 30, 2009
Roger Kay, President, Endpoint Technologies

Roger Kay, President at Endpoint Technologies is optimistic about Windows 7. I'm not!

A little less than 2-years after the launch of the much hated Windows Vista, Microsoft is getting ready to launch its successor.

Windows 7 is expected to be pre-installed in consumers PCs as early as the end of summer, just in time for the back-to-school season.

Under the hood, Windows 7 is essentially Vista, according to Endpoint Technologies analyst Roger Kay.

But for Kay, Windows 7 is better than Vista in important ways:

  1. Smaller footprint — The new OS takes up less disk space and runs with less main memory; part of the release surprise is the actual hardware specifications, which are similar to those for Windows XP, Vista’s less-resource-hungry predecessor.
  2. Faster — Everything is faster: boot time, application loading, overall performance.
  3. Quiescent — A lot of the old “chattiness” of Vista, particularly of user account control, is gone; the user interface stays out of your face and does what you tell it to do.
  4. More elegant — There are many fun and intuitive features that work well, stay in the background otherwise, and look good; the interface can be personalized more easily and to a greater degree.

Sounds like a MacOS me-too, right?

I’ll be testing the final release of Windows 7 soon on a Mac virtualized environment – just to fasten the comparison! – and will report back!


H-P PC Sales Fall: Is The Mirage Over?

February 18, 2009

Despite financial incentives – like a 0% financing to small and medium businesses to buy notebooks – H-P’s PC division recorded a steep decline last quarter, in both sales and profits.

Revenues for the Palo Alto, Calif.-company’s Personal Systems Group (PSG) declined 19 per cent to $8.8 billion, with unit shipments down 4 per cent.

Notebook revenue for the quarter was down 13 per cent, while Desktop revenue declined 25 per cent.

Commercial client revenue was down 19 per cent, while consumer client revenue decreased 18 per cent.

Operating profit was $435 million, down from $628 million, in the prior-year period.


Prototype: Asus Shows Off First Tablet PC

January 9, 2009

At the Consumer Electrronics Show, PC maker Asus showed off a 10-inch tablet Pc that is expects to be on the market in June. The machine uses the low-power Atom chip from Intel, Windows XP from Microsoft and has a 160 GB hard drive. It is to sell for about $500.

The Eee PC T101H

The Eee PC T101H


Will Apple’s IPhone Lose To Google’s Android The Same Way Mac Lost To The PC?

October 31, 2008
Will the iPhone follow the Mac?

Ron Maltiel: Will the iPhone follow the Mac?

High-tech consultant Ron Maltiel raises an interest question about the iPhone:

Is history repeating itself in the evolution of the mobile internet platform? In the 80s, when the personal computer (PC) industry started there was no standard personal computer. The PC market got a shot in the arm when IBM introduced a personal computer that became a standard as a result of IBM’s size and power. Its open specification enabled many developers to create applications that could run on the IBM PC. The PC market took off with a standard general purpose computer offered by many vendors for any possible application. IBM’s open standard for PC propelled the adoption of the PC. Many new applications were created by many developers which propagated demand for the PC. Apple’s Mac closed system and tight controls of outsider developers reduced the demand for the elegant Mac computer.

Apple’s development of the iPhone brings back memories of the development of their first Mac computers. While Apple is trying to avoid their mistake with the Mac of limiting outside development, they still have a closed system with tight controls. For example, you cannot watch videos from internet sites that use flash video media – you are limited to web sites that use Apple video media. Google’s GPhone is more of an open system. The question is whether it will grow faster than the iPhone as a result of it being an open system. The answer depends on whether Google has enough cache to attract enough developers to create applications around the GPhone platform similar to the ones that evolved around IBM’s PC. One of the key differences is that IBM initially built and sold a large number of PCs and helped the market grow. Google doesn’t make or service GPhones. However, they could leverage their dominant position in internet applications such as search, maps and other to create and promote a more versatile GPhone than the iPhone.

Time will tell….

See Ron’s post at: http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/iPhonre_GPhone_Smart_Phone_maltiel_semiconductor.html


[SoundBite] Are Windows PCs Useful? Yes, When Turned OFF, Google CEO Jokes

October 4, 2008

Not much to add except to say that Eric Schmidt is also on Apple’s board!

Schmidt had that comment/joke while speaking about different ways of preserving energy during his keynote about Google’s energy plan at the Commonwealth Club of California. I just found it funny enough to highlight this part in particular!


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