HP to cut 27,000 jobs

[marmar]

SAN FRANCISCO—Hewlett-Packard plans to jettison 27,000 workers as the growing popularity of smartphones, the iPad and other mobile devices makes it tougher for the company to sell personal computers.

The cuts announced Wednesday represent the HP’s largest payroll purge in its 73-year history.

The reductions will affect about eight per cent of Hewlett-Packard Co.’s nearly 350,000 employees by the time the overhaul is completed in October 2014.

HP hopes to avoid as many layoffs by offering early retirement packages. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1183112--hewlett-packard-to-cut-27-000-workers?bn=1

[WCGreen]

1. Off message, are you watching the game between your Tigers and my Indians....

What a great game...

[marmar]

2. No. I've vowed not to watch the Tigers until they start playing with some consistency.

nt

[TheWraith]

3. HP has been in a spiral for years.

In large part because they can't diversify, and they can't do their core business very well. They spent a fortune to buy out Palm Inc, which was in a death spiral of its own, then another fortune trying to build and push a line of HP smartphones and tablets. Not necessarily bad hardware, mind you, but a completely tone-deaf move in trying to compete with the platform juggernauts of Android and iOS. So they ended up having to fire-sale a few hundred million dollars worth of hardware because it wouldn't sell any other way. Meanwhile, their PC side is churning out functional but unremarkable computers, which don't really do anything to distinguish themselves or add value for the customer. If they could turn things around and show the customers the benefits of hardware specialization, say a PC which does something/several things BETTER than tablets, then they'd have a better shot.

[FarCenter]

4. From their earnings presentation, it looks like the worst problems are printers and Unix servers

Revenues are down in both areas.

[TheWraith]

5. That too.

Printers were HP's bread and butter for a long, long time, but mobile devices are killing those too--you no longer need to print something out to be able to carry it around, when you can get a tablet. Not to mention paperless archiving and backups.

Though it's partly the fault of design. Back when printers were incredibly vital to everything, HP and the other big printer companies started building their printers in highly eccentric ways, trying to force users to buy only brand name ink, reporting "low ink" with 40% left, and basically trying to leech off the millions of businesses that had no choice but to work with their printers. I have a Lexmark printer for which a color ink cartridge actually costs more than the printer originally did. Printers which were less troublesome and expensive to work with would have given people less reason to seek alternate solutions.

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. HP's death spiral began when they got rid of the geeks and replaced them with MBA's.

I worked for them several times over two decades and saw the disintegration progress. In short, they have contracted out 98% of their actual work while spending all their time trying to manipulate the stock price. They don't do anything because it is a good idea or that it will benefit customers or employees any longer. Every move they make has only one goal, move the stock price up and suck the company dry.

[GObamaGO]

6. Just Meg Whitman creating jobs...

Oh wait!

[CK_John]

7. Meg needs to make back lost funds in Gov race. nt

[Initech]

8. But but they're job creators!!!!

Job destroyers is a far more accurate title.

[Honeycombe8]

10. When I read that today, I wondered who is going to do all that work?

It's not like those people were just sitting around doing nothing. So I guess it means HP's business has taken a dive.

I also read that HP is going to direct its business to a different direction, so maybe they're laying off in the divisions they are going to steer business away from.

All those people without jobs. How sad. The suffering, the futures ruined for those who don't find jobs soon and have to use their savings to live.