HP returns to Japan's consumer market after 4-year absence
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard kicked off a push into Japan's consumer PC market on Tuesday after being absent from the space for about four years. "We believe the opportunity is right," said Takafumi Oka, president of Hewlett-Packard Japan at a Tokyo news conference. "This will be an important milestone in our history." On Tuesday the company launched three new desktops and a laptop. It began marketing laptop PCs to consumers about six months ago, but the launch represents the start of a more serious attack on the home turf of local market leaders like Fujitsu, NEC, Toshiba, and Sony. HP is focusing its efforts on a direct sales model through the Internet and telephone. Additionally it will open three mini-stores inside major electronics shops in Tokyo where prospective customers will be able to try out the PCs, talk with HP representatives and place orders. Two of the stores will open on Wednesday and the third on Friday. HP's machines will be offered built-to-order and produced at an existing HP factory in Tokyo. That makes Japan the first market outside of the U.S. to have a local assembly plant for custom-ordered PCs, said Junichi Yamashita, who heads HP Japan's mobile and consumer business. As a result consumers will be able to get their PCs five days after ordering, he said. HP Japan left the consumer market four years ago after it merged with Compaq and decided to concentrate on enterprise customers in Japan. "The difference this time is that we have a better understanding we hope of the kinds of products you have to deliver to the Japanese market," said Richard Walker, vice president and general manager of HP in an interview with IDG News Service. "Also we're talking a different route to market this time. Previously we tried retail and quite honestly got killed." The direct sales model should make things different this time around, he said. "As I heard the presentation I got the feeling that HP is now getting serious about Japan," said Shunsuke Yoshizawa, head of AMD's Japanese marketing unit, at the news conference. Yoshizawa said Japanese consumers tend to be "very picky" when it comes to buying a PC and putting their trust in a brand. The company wouldn't name a specific goal for its reentry into the consumer market but said it hopes to achieve a double-digit market share. Doing so would make it a major player in the Japan consumer market. In the third quarter of 2006, the latest period for which figures are available, only four PC makers enjoyed a double-digit share of the entire PC market, according to IDC. NEC led the market with a 20.8 percent share, second was Fujitsu at 18.6 percent, third was Dell with a 13.5 percent share and fourth was Toshiba at 10.3 percent.
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A 30 percent stake in Hewlett-Packard&#39;s Chinese operations is up for sale to the highest bidder as the company&#39;s Chinese partner looks to sell its shares.In a filing (in Chinese) with the China Beijing Equity Exchange, state-owned China Electronics Import &amp; Export Co. (CEIEC) invited bids for its stake in China HP and set a minimum price of 967 million yuan ($133 million).CEIEC will accept bids until Feb. 2 from qualified Chinese companies. Offers from financial institutions or hedge funds will not be considered, it said.HP had little to say in response to CEIEC&#39;s offer, but reaffirmed the importance of China HP to its overall business.&quot;China is a critically important market to HP and continues to hold tremendous opportunities for our business. ... Whilst we do not comment on our financial or operational plans in the future, HP will ensure its business operations remain unaffected,&quot; wrote Joanne Tan, a company spokeswoman, in an e-mail.China HP was founded in 1985 as a joint venture between HP and CEIEC. Over the years, the joint venture has been successful and China HP is a major player in key local markets, such as PCs and servers.Joint ventures are a common way of doing business in China, with foreign companies tapping the experience and connections of a local partner.In the best situations, these partnerships can help the foreign company build and grow their business in China faster than would otherwise be possible.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. has moved aggressively into the PC market in China by introducing a $483 machine, a price point which is in the same ballpark as other lean PCs announced earlier in the year by Lenovo Group.
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Hewlett-Packard Co expects to follow 6% growth to $97bn in 2007 with a 4% to 6% increase to a range of $100.9bn to $102.8bn in 2008, with expansion driven by its computer hardware and printing business.
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TOKYO -- Japanese electronics maker Hitachi said Friday it will sell personal computers made by Hewlett-Packard Co. that are designed for businesses under the Hitachi brand in Japan.
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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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Upbeat earnings from U.S. computer  company Hewlett-Packard drove an index of Asian stocks outside  of Japan toward a 5-year high, but the dollar's weakness  against the yen pressured shares in Japanese exporters.
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Japan got a double dose of good economic news Friday with the release of healthy industrial production and consumer price figures that underlines continued recovery of the world's second-largest economy.
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(InfoWorld) - PCs running Microsoft'sÂ new Windows Vista operating systemÂ got a cool response from consumers in Japan during their first month on sale, according to data published Tuesday. Sales of desktop and laptop computers from brand-name makers in February were 1.2 percent higher than the same month in 2006, said BCN. The company came up with its figure after analyzing point-of-sales system data from about 560 specialist PC and electronics shops that are part of 12 retail chains. The entire market was up 6 percent thanks to better demand for white-box PCs made by computer stores and for motherboards. The jump in the brand-market was smaller than expected by market watchers, who thought the launch of the long-awaited operating system on Jan. 30 would give the PC market more of a kick. Better sales had been expected in part because consumers had shown a lack of interest in new PCs in the months prior to Vista's launch. In October, sales were down 21 percent compared to the previous year. In November, they were 22 percent lower, in December 19 percent down and in January 14 percent below the same month in 2006. The little strength there was in the brand-name market came from increased sales of laptops, sales of which were up 9.3 percent on a unit basis for the month, said BCN. The desktop sector was down 13.8 percent on the year. Despite the apparently lackluster response from Japanese consumers, Microsoft and two major PC makers have in the last 24 hours given the Vista launch votes of confidence. "We're actually pretty happy with how the launch has gone so far," said Darren Huston, president and CEO of Microsoft's Japan unit, at a news conference on Monday. The same day Walt Mayo, corporate director of Dell Japan's home and business sales division, said in an interview that the Vista launch has been "good overall." On Tuesday Richard Walker, head of Hewlett Packard's consumer PC division, said sales of Vista PCs were "strong" in the global market. He didn't have any data specific to the Japanese market. "We're definitely ahead of our plan as far as Vista is concerned," he said. Among Vista sales demand for the premium versions has been greater than anticipated, said Microsoft's Huston. "That was actually a good, positive surprise for us," he said.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard has won a license from the Chinese government to sell more smartphone models in the country, a company spokeswoman said Thursday. The Network Access License granted to the world's largest PC maker will allow it to expand smartphone sales in China to multiple models, but the company couldn't immediately confirm how many. Currently, HP is allowed to sell only one smartphone, the hp6515 iPaq. The original license to sell one mobile phone product was granted in 2005, but the new license is much more comprehensive, said Liana Teo, a spokeswoman for HP in Singapore. She declined to provide further details, and said HP would announce new models as it makes them ready for the China market. China hasÂ more mobile phone subscribersÂ than any other country: 508.6 million as of the end of July, according to the nation's Ministry of Information Industry (MII). That's more than double wireless trade group CTIA's estimate of 243.3 million for the U.S., or the 193 million subscribers in India reported by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Last week,Â HP announced five new iPaq modelsÂ in the U.S.; the iPaq 900 Series Business Messenger, a 3G (third-generation) phone; the iPAQ 600 Series Business Navigator, a 3G phone with built-in GPS (Global Positioning System); the iPaq 300 Series Travel Companion, a PDA with built-in GPS; the iPaq 200 Series Enterprise Handheld for business users; and the iPaq 100 Series Classic Handheld with Wi-Fi connectivity and easy synching with a PC. For now, those 3G models will offer little benefit in China, which has yet to issue network operators with licenses to build 3G networks. However, the government has said itÂ hopes to have 3G services runningÂ in time for the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008. Â
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Hewlett-Packard blasted into the consumer-electronic market on Friday with its most significant product launch of the year, unveiling new televisions, digital cameras, photo printers, notebooks and desktop PCs.
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Gateway is returning to Japan and will be launching some new desktop and laptop computers for the new market. Leveraging the distribution channels of its eMachines brand, the company now offers its new line
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard continued to pull ahead of DellÂ in global PC sales during the fourth quarter of 2006, according to an industry report released Tuesday. Dell was the only top-five vendor to ship fewer PCs in the fourth quarter of 2006 than in the same period of the previous year, reporting a decline of 8.6 percent to 9.6 million units, according to iSuppli. In contrast, the global PC market grew 6.3 percent to 66.7 million for the quarter. Dell is struggling to adjust to theÂ resignation of its CEO in January, an accounting investigation by stock regulators, a shareholder lawsuit, andÂ sinking profits. However, HP also hit turbulence in 2006, with aÂ corporate spying scandalÂ that forced the resignation of Chairman Patricia Dunn. Still, Dell had built up such a large lead in annual sales that it held onto a thin 0.3 percent lead over HP in market share for the full year of 2006. That lead won't last long if current trends continue, said Matthew Wilkins, iSuppli's principal analyst for computer platforms, in a statement. Both HP and Acer grew much faster than the market as a whole and could soon pass their rivals. In the fourth quarter, HP had the greatest market share with 17.4 percent, followed by Dell at 14.5 percent, Lenovo at 7.1 percent, Acer at 6.6 percent, and Toshiba at 3.7 percent. Those numbers placed the companies in the same rankings they held in the third quarter of 2006. But ranked by their sales growth compared to the fourth quarter of 2005, Acer had the best term with a 42.7 percent increase, leading Toshiba, which had 21.3 percent, HP at 21.1 percent, Lenovo with 8.2 percent, and Dell with its 8.6 percent loss. At that rate, HP will soon pass Dell for the No. 1 spot, and Acer will soon pass Lenovo for the No. 3 ranking, Wilkins said.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ introduced an entry-level rack server in India on Thursday, part of its strategy to design lower-cost servers specifically for Asian countries. Asia has high growth markets like China and India, but the needs and usage models of customers there are different from those elsewhere in the world, Paul Miller, HPâs vice president of marketing for Industry Standard Servers (ISS) and BladeSystems, told reporters in Bangalore on Thursday. A large proportion of customers in Asia, including smaller businesses, don't need all the features included with HP servers sold in other regions, said Tony Parkinson, HPâs vice president and general manager for ISS in the Asia Pacific. âCustomers in Asia want a âgood enoughâ product which is reliable, good quality, good brand, and not very expensiveâ, he said. The new server, the ProLiant DL180, is based on Dual Core and Quad-Core Xeon processors from Intel and priced from 100,000 Indian rupees, or about $2,500. HP said the servers will help Asian businesses to migrate from tower servers to rack servers, by offering the efficiency of a rack server and the economics of a tower server. Users in Asia often stuff tower servers into racks because of space constraints, but have not migrated to rack servers because of their higher costs, Miller said. Some of the features and components, included as standard on similar HP rack servers, are offered as options on the DL180 to drive down costs, said Kevin Van Mondfrans, HPâs manager of product marketing for ISS. For example, while Asian customers want basic management capabilities, they don't see a need for the more sophisticated management software typically offered on these servers, he said. Usage models also differ in Asia, according to HP. The DL180 is likely to be used as a standalone storage server in Asia, while customers in the U.S. tend to use such systems as part of a storage area network (SAN), Parkinson said. The products for Asia are being designed at an HP ProLiant design center in Taiwan. Asia is the only region the company is designing special products for, Miller said. However, some of the products for Asia may be offered later in other developing markets, such as Latin America and Russia, he said. The ProLiant ML115, introduced in March as a tower server at the cost of a desktop, was designed for Asia but eventually introduced in other parts of the world. HP will offer customers in Asia a mix of Asia-specific products and standard products, as some Asian customers, such as large enterprises, want the full-featured products, Parkinson said. He did not say how many more servers HP is designing exclusively for the region.
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Hewlett-Packard, the top global PC vendor, Thursday introduced a multimedia notebook packed with high-definition features, including a screen that allows users to watch full HDTV movies.The HP Pavilion HDX laptop, targeted at multimedia enthusiasts, has a 20.1-inch high-definition screen that plays back true 1080p high-definition television, according to HP. Users will have the option of selecting from an HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc drives to play back high-definition movies.Powered by the Core 2 Extreme or Core 2 Duo processors from Intel, the system includes a hybrid TV tuner that lets users watch high-definition or analog TV broadcasts. The tuner will also provide digital video recorder capabilities, with users able to record and pause live TV.The system includes an Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTS graphics card with 512MB of video memory, HP said. It also includes has four Altec Lansing speakers with a subwoofer built in. The system will support storage of up to 500GB and have integrated wired and wireless networking.The system will run on Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate. Starting at $1,999, the system will ship in the U.S. this month, according to HP.HP on Thursday also introduced the Pavilion tx2000 tablet PC, a portable laptop targeted at students and professionals. Users can rotate the screen 180 degrees and use a stylus to capture handwriting or surf the Internet, according to HP.Powered by Advanced Micro Devices&#39; Turion 64 X2 dual-core processor, the PC comes with a 12.1-inch screen and Windows Vista OS. It will have a DVD+/- RW drive, up to 250GB of storage, integrated wireless and wired networking, a fingerprint reader and a webcam. It weighs 4.29 pounds (1.95 kilograms) with a four-cell battery, according to HP.The PC will be available starting at $1,299, depending on configuration. It will ship later this month in the U.S.The laptops were announced ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show, to be held in Las Vegas between January 7 and 10, where they will be on display.
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The PC market, long declared dead by some, grew in double-digit figures again in 2004. Dell expands lead as HP slips.
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With its enterprise division still reeling from its financial woes, HP (Quote, Chart) announced today 25 new consumer products it hopes will reinvigorate its brand.