HP's Shift On PCs Could Boost Acer, Dell and Lenovo 156
CWmike writes "With HP spinning off its PC business, rivals will be looking for a way to get a bigger piece of the hardware pie. HP's PC unit news, among other industry-rattling announcements, including pulling out of the tablet market and shuttering webOS, rocked the hardware industry since HP is by far the dominant maker in the world. So while HP decides what to do, rivals should be plotting their next move, say industry analysts. Who could benefit the most from any change-up in PC sales? The obvious suspects: Dell, which passed Acer in the second quarter of this year; and Acer is looking to make up some lost ground and could see HP's shake up as an opportunity. And don't forget Lenovo, which holds the third-largest market share. Despite the general downshift for PCs, Lenovo is riding some great momentum right now, reports Gartner. In the second quarter of 2011, the company saw 22.5% growth in its PC shipments."
A related article ponders the fate of webOS, looking at a number of potential buyers as well as the unlikely possibility that HP will open source it.
Re:Doomed... Not in a good way (Score:5, Informative)
If they sell of their computer business what do they think they can sell?
"Personal computer business" != "computer business". Their Q3 2011 financial review [corporate-ir.net] indicates that, in earnings from operations in the quarter ending July 31, 2011, the rest of the computer business - "Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking" - was third, after the services business and the printer/scanner business, and ahead of the PC business.
Re:Doomed... Not in a good way (Score:5, Informative)
That explains why IBM is out of business, unless you think that servers and POS are carrying all the load.
Right... but for the last few years HP has claimed it's competing with IBM Global Services, but I don't see much real evidence of that. And I don't see HP making a lot of software either... IBM has the DB2 and WebSphere product lines (sales of which are driven by their Global Services contracts). I don't know if IBM's hardware outsells HP's, but they have a lot of products available there, too, and they cost money.
But then again, although I have two consumer-market HP PCs here in my office, I'd categorize the tower as "average to meh" and the laptop is pretty much junk. I'd love to see HP clear some space in the retail channel if it means someone who actually knows how to make a decent PC takes their place.
Re:Or Apple (Score:2, Informative)
I dislike Apple as much as the next guy, but be reasonable here - the Macbook Air is expensive because it is ultra light weight unlike the Dell. A Samsung that comes close to the specs of the Macbook is NP900X3A at $1650 and it is half the hard drive and a weaker processor. Take a look at the 3 lb models from others and the Macbook is probably in the upper middle price range ($1400, $1650, $1600, $1950 were the prices for such a laptop with even a $128 SSD on TigerDirect).