Remember that HP never stopped making computers. Those suppliers could have taken that anxiety out on component pricing for current and near-future HP orders. Now that HP is in love with PCs again, it's likely that its suppliers are back in love with HP.
Thanks to recent events, as well as its existing product portfolio, HP is uniquely positioned to deliver that something.
I'll concede it's unlikely that HP will supplant Windows for WebOS wholesale, but I would also encourage HP to reconsider its earlier plan to mash the two operating systems into co-existence. Aside from Apple (and Moto-Google doesn't count, yet), HP is the only other vendor on that list with an operating system and the relevant hardware manufacturing experience.
Regardless of its operating system and platform plans, HP would at least be wise to remember that the threat of the market leader abandoning its market was disruptive enough that, for a moment, people cared about big, sloppy, commodity PCs again. In rejecting the idea of getting rid of its PC division, Hewlett-Packard Co. and its new CEO Meg Whitman, also made some decisions about the type of company they want.
First, HP doesn't want to be like IBM and focus on data center hardware, and high margin services and software.
Second, HP doesn't want to be tone deaf like Netflix and make a decision that could cost it customers and good will. Third, HP wants to move on. In announcing the possibility of selling off the PC division, then-CEO Leo Apotheker was considering narrowing HP's focus, IBM-like, on core data center technologies and other enterprise services. PCs are low margin and HP's tablet, the TouchPad, wasn't working out so well against Apple's iPad.
Analysts were, in many ways, mystified by the decision to get rid of the Personal Systems Group. The video company saw a drop in customers and stock value after it raised prices. There were concerns among analysts that without its PC division, HP would lose sales with businesses and pay higher prices for components if it lost its ability to buy parts, like disk drives and processors, at great scale.
King believes that HP made the right decision to stay intact; other analysts agree.
Gillett cites the coming transition to Windows 8 and the continuing evolution of tablets as good reasons to stay in the personal systems business. He also pointed to the growing smartphone market and the increasing use of personal computing devices in the workplace.
Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, said the Personal Systems Group decision announced Thursday makes Whitman look good. The decision to keep the PC division "showcases that she makes measured decisions and is difficult to trick into doing something stupid," said Enderle.
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