Why HP Should Sell Its PC Business To Save It 221
packetrat writes "Hewlett Packard may not be in danger as a company, but its future in the PC business is in doubt, thanks to former CEO Leo Apotheker's maneuvers to turn HP into IBM. This article at Ars says Meg Whitman should go ahead and sell off the PC business — mostly because HP's management is so inept, it would likely do better without them. Agilent seems to be doing okay since it was spun off in 1999, but HP may have spun off its soul in the process."
To maximize shareholder value... (Score:5, Interesting)
They should just concentrate on the one really profitable thing they do - making ink.
Or they should just sell off their assets, and then pay the shareholders off.
Didnt work out well for IBM's products (Score:5, Interesting)
After IBM PCD was sold off to Lenovo, the quality has decreased.
Their well-known Thinkpad product line transitioned from a no compromise option to a lesser product. First, the high-quality Flexview displays went. Next was any non-widescreen display, followed by the split into the current models seen today. In trying to globalize a US brand, they killed what made the Thinkpads unique - being able to pay a good amount of money, and get a no-nonsense, no-compromise product.
As for HP:
The damage at HP was done during Fiorina's time. You want to blame anyone, you pin it on her. Not Hurd, or Apotheker.
Engineering a product for the Third World and then simply changing the product manuals/power plugs for the First World always results in an inferior product. Selling it off to an interest in the Third World guarantees this outcome.
Re:HP Didn't Spin Off Its Soul (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone should write a paper or a book about the destruction of American business by the MBA.
My brother could contribute to the project. He was a pedigreed professor of finance who could teach anywhere he chose. After a few years he was offered tenure. He realized then that his job had become the mass-production of MBAs, very very few of whom were at all receptive to the most crucial idea he tried to impart to them: you should make money, not merely get money.
Seeing then that the fruit of his labors were ruining our society, he quit to start over becoming a EE. I admire him for that.
Re:HP Didn't Spin Off Its Soul (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone should write a paper or a book about the destruction of American business by the MBA.
I'd read this book, and hope one of the case studies would be about Border Books, a fantastic company of the '80s and early '90s. Then the creators and early executives left and the whole board was taken over by MBAs who had never worked in a bookstore, had no idea why Borders was superior to (or even different from) Barnes & Noble, and didn't understand anything about how the internet was changing retail.
Then the company died.