Questions surrounding HP’s PC business deter enterprise customers

Business

HP’s customers are wary of purchasing new products from the company after its recent decision to kill off its webOS mobile operating system and possibly spin off its PC business. The chief information officer of Fluor Corp Ray Barnard told The Wall Street Journal his company typically spends $25 million per year upgrading its hardware and software. Barnard said that Fluor Corp was considering purchasing a number of HP computers capable of displaying 3D graphics, but has instead decided not to purchase from the company just yet. “I’ve put that all on hold” he told The Wall Street Journal. “It appears that they’re lost right now.” Read on for more.

Barnard’s opinion is shared by other HP customers as well. “This appears to just come out of the blue without a really good explanation,” the vice chancellor for information services at Purdue University said. “It makes you wonder what the strategy really is and where they are going.” There are loyal customers, however. DreamWorks Animation CTO Ed Leonard said that he will still do business with the company. “We trust them,” Leonard explained. “The worst thing you can have is companies that are afraid to make calls.”

26 Comments
  • Anonymous

    Number Juan!

    • http://www.pixelreason.com PixelReason

      haha, you are Juan funny guy!

      • Anonymous

        i guess u could say it takes juan, to know juan…

      • http://www.pixelreason.com PixelReason

        while that may be true, it is said that “there can be only Juan!”

    • Anonymous

      I just got a $829.99 iPad2 for only $103.37 and my mom got a $1499.99 HDTV for only $251.92, they are both coming with USPS tomorrow. I would be an idiot to ever pay full retail prices at places like Walmart or Bestbuy. I sold a 37″ HDTV to my boss for $600 that I only paid $78.24 for. I use l-k.be/9l

  • Anonymous

    Makes sense, but one guy says is so it must be fact for everyone?

  • Josh Serra

    ive been i the market for a new laptop and HP was high on my list until this debacle. I want to make sure ill have support after the purchase if something were to go wrong, I’m not sure I have that with HP right now.

  • Josh Serra

    ive been i the market for a new laptop and HP was high on my list until this debacle. I want to make sure ill have support after the purchase if something were to go wrong, I’m not sure I have that with HP right now.

    • Anonymous

      HP laptops have always been pretty crappy in my experience…….though I’m used to using Thinkpads (way better).

      • Drybones5

        I wouldn’t buy an HP unless you got an Envy which I did which I like a lot, much different than their other computers and premium feeling to it.  Though the battery life is poor, at least on the i7 models.  The new models with i5 second gen with integrated graphics are suppose to help that.

      • http://twitter.com/snookasnoo Idon’t Know

        You must have been using HP consumer laptops then.  Their business series is quite good, better than Lenovo made Thinkpads which are not nearly as good as the IBM made Thinkpads.  Lenovo has cut material and build quality by a lot.  In fact the very large, very well known company I work for just switched to HP W series laptops from Lenovo.  Way too many DOA laptops and laptops that died after a month or so of use.  My T400 is due for replacement soon and I was looking forward to getting an HP W series but who knows what will happen now.
        Even if HP dumps their cheap crappy consumer laptop division they should still sell the business series if they intend to sell HP servers.
        This is a truly monumental screw up on HP’s part and the guy at Dreamworks that says he’s not worried is really not paying attention.

  • http://twitter.com/TheFixer Fixer of Things

    As a Dell Premier Reseller, I don’t see any problems with this :)

    • http://twitter.com/snookasnoo Idon’t Know

      Yeah it won’t affect you as a Dell reseller.  Nobody wants your cheap, poor quality,  no support junk anyway.  Most of the companies I know that switched to HP business series did it to get rid of Dell.  They won’t be coming back.

  • Anonymous

    Stories like this only support my prediction that Microsoft will buy HP PC business and create a line of top quality pcs to showcase their brand and secure the transition to widows 8. Everyday I see this deal coming

    • Carmen

      This hadn’t occurred to me until I read your statement but this wouldn’t surprise me one bit.  I actually think that they could completely shake up the industry if they killed off their licensing of Windows and just put it on their machines…perhaps starting with Windows 8.

      • Carmen

        I just remembered that they opened retail stores too!  This could be part of it all.

      • Anonymous

        Think about, they once again take a page from Apple’s playbook and create a stella line of PCs that run windows the way its supposed to run and integrate the ecosystem with Zune, Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360, Kinect. and do it right.They have the capability to do it just look at their hardware division who have had many success stories from the Kinect to Mice to XBox. I suggest that their strategy of licensing their OS has come to an end, after years of vendors making inferior hardware that contributed to MSFT earning a bad reputation. With these low margins the foreign companies will begin to abandon the PC market. Microsoft has an opportunity to turn things around.I suggest that they also produce line of a high power machines that will let them compete with Oracle/ Sun in that enterprise business. Its a no brainer in a few years all these corporations will need to switch to either Mac OS or Windows 8, Microsoft can not chance them leaving their platform. If they get into corporations using the old IBM model of service and software they will be able to usher in and guide those corporate clients into Windows 8. Otherwise faced with sub quality hardware choices Corporate will turn to Apple. Microsoft has been given a once in a lifetime opportunity, a few decades ago they were smart enough to jump through a window like this, let’s see if they still nimble enough to do it once again.

    • http://twitter.com/snookasnoo Idon’t Know

      People have been saying that for 30 years and for 30 years they have been wrong.

      • Anonymous

        Think about, they once again take a page from Apple’s playbook and create a stella line of PCs that run windows the way its supposed to run and integrate the ecosystem with Zune, Windows Phone 7,
        Think about, they once again take a page from Apple’s playbook and create a stella line of PCs that run windows the way its supposed to run and integrate the ecosystem with Zune, Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360, Kinect. and do it right.They have the capability to do it just look at their hardware division who have had many success stories from the Kinect to Mice to XBox. I suggest that their strategy of licensing their OS has come to an end, after years of vendors making inferior hardware that contributed to MSFT earning a bad reputation. With these low margins the foreign companies will begin to abandon the PC market. Microsoft has an opportunity to turn things around.I suggest that they also produce line of a high power machines that will let them compete with Oracle/ Sun in that enterprise business. Its a no brainer in a few years all these corporations will need to switch to either Mac OS or Windows 8, Microsoft can not chance them leaving their platform. If they get into corporations using the old IBM model of service and software they will be able to usher in and guide those corporate clients into Windows 8. Otherwise faced with sub quality hardware choices Corporate will turn to Apple. Microsoft has been given a once in a lifetime opportunity, a few decades ago they were smart enough to jump through a window like this, let’s see if they still nimble enough to do it once again.

      • Norm

        Are you on drugs or just retarded?  Who the hell wants a Zune, W8 and Win Phone ecosystem?  If it comes from a cow or horse or your ass, shit is shit.

  • http://MobileGenius.wordpress.com JM

    I have said a few times now that this shows a lack of planning and terrible execution by HP executives. There is no reason for them to have purchased Palm and WebOS, been unable or unwilling to support the platform, then suddenly announce that HP will stop all production on hardware related to the OS, as well as potentially removing itself from the personal computing business entirely, without a clear plan for the future of the company or its current products. I cannot imagine that people won’t be let go for this.

    • Anonymous

      unfortunately the people who are responsible won’t be the ones let go.

  • Anonymous

    lost… yes. dazed and confused perhaps more accurate.

  • George Rodriguez

    I switched from desktops to laptops around 7 years ago and ever since I’ve purchased only HP consumer laptops (5 in total) and honestly my experience have been great with all of them, and I must say that I’ve used the heck out of them all. My current DV6-3160US (AMD Quad Core) gave me in fact and improvement in build quality from all the previous ones, with its aluminum/plastic frame instead of the all-plastic of all the previous ones. Unfortunately with this “Company Murdering” that is taking place with HP probably my next laptop won’t be a HP, which obviously makes me very sad since I’ve been loyal to the brand over the years. That uncertainty and “who knows” cloud that surrounds the company right now is just too much to go on and spend my hard earned money buying one of their products.

    I can really understand that the market has been changing dramatically over the last 3 years and that a big majority of the “just-web-browsing-and-email” market who used to by laptops before have switched to tablets (well iPads essentially), so sales have been declining and margins have been shrinking. But to murder their whole hardware business on that fact it’s just stupid, more if you take into account that the business market won’t be moving to tablets only scenarios anytime soon and that there are other brands (Dell, Toshiba, Acer, etc) that are still doing fine in the hardware business.

  • http://bcablog.com BCA

    HP did it to themselves…..

  • Anonymous

    I just got a $ 830 iPad2 for only $ 104.38 and my mom got a $ 1500 HDTV for only $ 252.93, they are both coming with FedEx tomorrow. I would be an idiot to ever pay full retail prices at places like Walmart or Bestbuy. I sold a 38″ HDTV to my boss for $ 600 that I only paid $ 79.22 for. I use http://alturl.com/8dpyq

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