The funniest line from today's HP drama comes from a tweet by Michael Dell: "If HP spins off their PC business...maybe they will call it Compaq?"
So now that HP has decided to get out of the PC business they have a lot of talking to do, like explaining all the strategies that led to this moment in time and why it bought Compaq in the first place. Compaq was a major player in the PC game and also the holder of DEC's legacy and the Alpha chip. Now they're all finished and HP's line of PCs is poised to follow.
Is this some sort of slash and burn strategy? It's baffling.
Here is an interesting clip from a Bloomberg report on the matter:
If its PC business is spun off, it will still be a major player, much as IBM's former hardware division has remained significant under Lenovo's guidance. But the spinoff would be a further indication that the PC business as most of us understood it—the driver of technology innovations and profits—is a thing of the past. And now that PCs are mostly commodities, there is little about them that is appealing to many of the current technology giants.
I suppose everyone could take a cue from IBM, which suckered Lenovo into buying its PC business. But guess what? Lenovo is doing fine in the business with great machines up and down the line.
OK, so this is not the business that it once was when we were all forced to buy a brand new machine every 18 months. Now we use machines for five years. Nobody cares about upgrades because the entire industry has dropped the ball on keep things exciting. Only Apple has a clue—making things exciting does help!
Go to a 1989 magazine rack and look at the computer-related material. Now look at the car magazines. Can any business be more mature than the car industry? No. But there are tons of magazines.
Go to the same newsstand today. No computer magazines in sight, and if you can unearth one, it's devoid of computers. It's all about cell phones. Now look at the car magazine section. Most of the magazines are still there. They incite interest with new models and revving ideas. What happened to the computer scene? How did it get so dull?
I don't know; I've been ranting about this for years. For some reason the entire industry lost faith in itself, and I include the Intel's and AMD's of the world, which seem to be running scared instead of extolling the virtues of desktop computers.
Then there is the printer business. HP essentially invented and popularized the ink-jet printer, and while it makes a decent product, the inks are outrageously expensive and Epson is killing them.
So what else can the company do? Well, here it comes. HP has always watched IBM and tried its best to ignore it while invariably falling back on strategic imitation. That means consulting and services. Ugh.
Meanwhile, the last time I went to Fry's Electronics, the entire sales floor was covered with HP machines. They owned the department. They locked up the channel. All that work, for what?
Well, good luck in the printer and ink business, HP. Nice knowing you.
You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.
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