H.P. Plans Big Shift Toward Business Customers
SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett-Packard said on Thursday that it was considering spinning off its personal computer business into a separate company and was in talks to acquire Autonomy, a business software maker.
Those would be the biggest moves yet by Leo Apotheker, H.P.’s chief executive, to refocus the company on business services and products. Mr. Apotheker has been trying to ramp up the company’s growth, which has been slow.
H.P. also said it would kill off its TouchPad tablet, which was just introduced in June and was meant to compete with the iPad from Apple, and stop making mobile phones that use the webOS operating system, which H.P. picked up when it bought Palm.
“Today is most about transforming H.P. for the future,” Mr. Apotheker told analysts in a conference call. He said that “these are tough decisions.”
HP kills off it’s PC and mobile device businesses in an effort to streamline and improve it’s bottom line. I had hoped that WebOS might gain some traction in the mobile market. Maybe they will allow someone else to try and take over the development of WebOS. Not likely. They seem to be following suit with Cisco, focusing on business and dropping consumer products.