Reporter's notebook: HP World users disdain offshore support move
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This week's HP World is over, and users at the event had a lot of things on their minds.
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Sun execs say they're telling it like it is: HP's Unix offering is on its last legs. HP says they're flat-out wrong.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard and itsÂ Watergate re-enactmentÂ now own the tech scandal headlines, but during the summer our attention focused on other alleged malfeasance, by the company with the normally shiny image: Apple Computer. A British newspaper claimed that one of Apple's contract manufacturers in China, Foxconn, owned by Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., wasÂ mistreating its workers, through low pay, long hours, and poor living conditions. What went unreported from this saga was that we so rarely see headlines that contain the words "Apple" and "China." Microsoft, Intel, GoogleÂ -- their ongoing conflicts with the Chinese government and the Chinese consumer are bread and butter for business and technology reporters in China. But Apple? In Beijing, the best evidence that Apple exists is an iPod billboard that faces one of the city's main arteries, and advertising during televised English soccer matches. There are quite a few iPods peeking out of people's pockets, but when it comes to which laptops are being tapped upon at Starbucks, it's HP, it's Dell, it's Sony, but except for foreigners, no Apple. The fact is, when it comes to China, Apple as a computer manufacturer and retailer is nowhere. The simple reason for this is that Apple is asking too much of Chinese consumers. The biggest factor is price. Service, quality, prestige, satisfaction -- these are extremely secondary concerns to the Chinese consumer. People bringing home $400-$600 per month are considered middle class in this country. They can afford to buy computers, and for them, price is the singular issue. An Apple machine in China costs between double and four times as much as a competing Wintel box. The computer whiz kid down the street can build you a generic box with a pirated copy of XP for about $400. An entry-level Lenovo computer probably costs about 20 to 25 percent more, followed by foreign name brands. Apple is at least double the no-name box. So, one month's salary to give your kid a computer and access to the Internet, or two months'? What would you choose? The second reason is availability of software. In China, if you're using Apple and you need software, you have to buy the legitimate product. For Apple, that means that their system is rejected, except by high-end graphic designers and die-hards. The cost of ownership of an Apple machine plus legit software to run on it is just too high for most people to consider. Third is service. Until recently, having your machine break down was the thing that every Apple user in China prayed to avoid. Repairs are much more accessible now, but still there are only one or two authorized service centers in Beijing, whereas fixing a Windows box is far simpler. Apple's China strategy for its computers seems entirely different than for the iPod. While its music player is accessible, affordable, and increasingly ubiquitous, for desktop hardware it seems to be following Vertu, the luxury phone maker, instead of Nokia. Unless Apple chooses to address this market on its own terms, there won't be any harvest for it here.
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(InfoWorld) - Last year's HP Technology Forum was chased out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This year, storm clouds of a different sort hang over the event. As an estimated 6,000 attendees converge on Houston for the annual Hewlett-Packard user conference, the subject on many minds is the one the company is most loathe to discuss: theÂ shakeup of HP's boardÂ and theÂ prospect of criminal chargesÂ related to a spying scandal. The California Attorney General and a Congressional committee are among the institutions probing HP's possibly illegal methods of investigating news leaks from its board. HP has until Tuesday to respond to an invitation from the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee for HP's Chairman Patricia Dunn and General Counsel Ann Baskins to testify at a Sept. 28 hearing in Washington. But at the Technology Forum, a gathering of HP user groups, partners and other vendors, HP is focusing on its business success, which is considerable. With revenue, earnings and stock price all resurgent in the last year, HP CEO Mark Hurd could rightly say, "Pay no attention to that prosecutor behind the curtain," when he delivers a keynote address on Sept. 18. In the quarter ended July 31, HP's earnings-per-share (EPS) topped analysts' estimates at $0.52 on 5 percent revenue growth to $21.9 billion, compared to the year ago quarter. Across many of its business lines, HP, of Palo Alto, California, has gained on rivals, said industry analyst Rob Enderle. HP personal computer sales have grown with its "the computer is personal again" marketing campaign, Enderle noted. IBMÂ sold its personal computer businessÂ to Lenovo Group, in 2005, and Dell has suffered negative publicity from the AugustÂ recall of 4.1 million fire-prone batteriesÂ in Dell laptops. In storage, HP closed the market share gap with EMC in second quarter numbers released Aug. 29 by research firm IDC. With EMC's 20 percent share, based on unit sales, to HP's 19.3 percent, the two are in a "statistical tie" said Brad Nisbet, an analyst with IDC. "HP has been executing well under new management," Nisbet said, referring to Hurd, CEO since March 2005. In servers, HP is a strong second to IBM, according to IDC market share numbers, but has made some errors, said Enderle. It still is using Intel's Itanium processor in its high-end Integrity servers, which rivals aren't embracing. Gartner research shows that 90 percent of the Itanium chips shipped in the first quarter of this year ran on HP servers; neither Dell nor IBM build Itanium computers. Technology Forum organizers get tight-lipped when the conversation shifts to the board scandal. "That's HP's business," said Nina Buik, vice president of Encompass, one of the HP user groups planning the event. "We're not focused on those issues unless it impacts the technology." And as long as the scandal doesn't touch Hurd personally, the customer satisfaction should be unaffected, said Crawford Del Prete, senior vice president of research at IDC. . "I don't think [the scandal] is a drag on the company's success," he said. "I have not found one customer who said 'I'm not going to do business, or I am concerned about doing business, with Hewlett-Packard as a result of this.'" HP Technology forum runs from Sunday to Thursday this week.
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HP World Free Alpha upgrades to stem defections
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HP customers hope that the turmoil surrounding an investigation into HP's probe of information leaks to journalists by board members doesn't affect them.
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The very image of success HP is putting its mouth where its money is by offering 2,300 of its key account customers a printer consultancy service.â¦
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By MICHAEL LIEDTKE   Associated Press writer  SAN FRANCISCO -- Battling to keep her job, Hewlett-Packard Co.
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(InfoWorld) - Although a report indicates the world's largest PC vendor may be cutting back on some orders to PC manufacturers for the third and fourth quarters of this year, an executive at the company said the problem isn't in laptop PCs. A report published last week by Goldman Sachs Group said Hewlett-Packard cut orders to supply chain partners "mainly in desktop PCs and to a lesser degree on the notebook side," adding that the downward revision was "mainly from the U.S. with some from selected emerging markets, but so far no impact from Europe." The investment banking firm offered several reasons for the order pullback, including possible over-ordering, concerns of a potential end-demand slowdown attributed to the subprime problem in the U.S. and efforts to manage inventories ahead of the holidays. But a senior HP executive said it's business as usual in the company's laptop PC division. "There really has not been a slowdown in our order rate," said Ted Clark, senior vice president and general manager of HP's mobile computing global business unit. He said he could not comment on desktop PCs because that's not his area of expertise at the company. The PC industry has marked a stellar year this year with record shipments of laptop PCs in particular. But analysts and market researchers haveÂ grown more worried in recent weeksÂ that the weakening housing market in the U.S. and woes caused by risky home loans, called subprime loans, may cause consumers to slow their spending on new gadgets and computers. Most analysts say only time will tell whether theÂ housing issues have spilled over into consumer spending. The Goldman Sachs report is an attempt to gauge how consumer spending is affecting orders to PC manufacturers. Â
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Customers are able to download full songs with their phone and put them on a computer. Also: Hewlett-Packard has major malfunctions with its software & hellip;. Microsoft and PalmOne, together at last & hellip;. and more.
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BANGALORE, INDIA -- The purely offshore outsourcing model is out of favor, and Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) companies are finding that they need U.S. facilities and staff to run operations for their American clients.
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By Jordan Robertson Associated Press  SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co.
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Pushing the envelope Deutsche Post World Net AG has inked a letter of intent to enter into an outsourcing agreement with HP Services.â¦
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The man bought from Europe to the US to help fix Hewlett-Packard's storage sales problems has issued a thinly disguised warning to HP's OEM supplier Hitachi to stop poaching its customers. "There's room for improvement in one area of our relationship with Hitachi, and it is in go-to-market.
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At HP World this week, company officials scrambled to reassure customers that it is working hard to fix its order processing problems by the end of this month.
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That Hewlett-Packard would seek nine journalists' phone records is downright disturbing, says Computerworld Editor in Chief Don Tennant. He has written about HP in a tongue-and-cheek way and wonders if he, too, could be on the list.
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Hewlett-Packard has taken its competition with Sun Microsystems to a new domain: Web logs. [Missing Links]