"Selecting the salesperson (Phil Davis) instead of the engineer (Ana Pinczuk), indicates that HPE thinks that their problem is merely one of sales and marketing."
Kind of like when Carly replaced Lew Platt as CEO. Didn't work then, won't work now. Carly killed the Information Appliance initiative in HP-Labs (ie the modern SmartPhone). APPL revenue this year ..... 1T$, First time for any corporation in America, largely due to the iPhone.
In her first book, Carly brags about killing Bell Labs while running Lucent. AFter she left, Lucent crashed because she was selling equipment on credit to companies that eventually couldn't pay. Only understood sales, not business as a whole.
"I can’t blame Carly for that. I also think she was focused on “the business” as a whole, not only the R&D and certainly exploiting “the flash” and advertising."
Baloney, I worked at HP on Page Mill Road at the time, Carly was focused on Carly plain and simple.
"HP was never great at capitalizing on consumer (read commodity) products. I’m not completely sure why but think it has something to do with over-engineering rather than razor thin margins required for commodity products as well as being nimble."
Beg to differ, Post founder HP was never great at capitalizing. Before that there was the HP-35 and many various different calculators. They owned the market.
from http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp35.htm
"Based on marketing studies done at the time, the HP-9100 was the "right" size and price for a scientific calculator. The studies showed little or no interest in a pocket device. However Bill Hewlett thought differently. He began the development of a "shirt pocket-sized HP-9100" on an accelerated schedule. It was a risky project involving several immature technologies. HP originally developed the HP-35 for internal use and then decided to try selling it. Based on a marketing study, it was believed that they might sell 50,000 units. It turned out that the marketing study was wrong by an order of magnitude. Within the first few months they received orders exceeding their guess as to the total market size. General Electric alone placed an order for 20,000 units. As a result, they later had to warn people to expect waiting lists in the Hewlett-Packard Journal. This was an unusual situation for HP. While many companies advertised calculators months or even years before you could buy one, HPs were normally available the day the first advertisements appeared."
Bill and Dave never wanted to get into a business they couldn't contribute in. When the first computers started shipping they could see it wants worth the investment and wanted to get out but it was a transition period and they let it slide. As Packard said, "computers will be the death of HP."
HP was never great at capitalizing on consumer (read commodity) products. I’m not completely sure why but think it has something to do with over-engineering rather than razor thin margins required for commodity products as well as being nimble. I can’t blame Carly for that. I also think she was focused on “the business” as a whole, not only the R&D and certainly exploiting “the flash” and advertising.
APPL Market Cap this year ..... 1T$ 41x that of HPE
HPE Market Cap this year ..... 24B$
"APPL revenue this year ..... 1T$"
Actually, that's Apple's market cap, not its revenues.
Yeah. AMD took the opposite approach in 2014 when Rory Read (Read graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in Information Systems from Hartwick College.[4]: wikipedia) stepped down so that Lisa Su (Su began attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall of 1986, intending to major in either electrical engineering or computer science. She settled on electrical engineering,[4] recollecting that it seemed like the most difficult major.[2][15] During her freshman year she worked as an undergrad research assistant "manufacturing test silicon wafers for graduate students"[16] through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). The project, as well as her summer jobs at Analog Devices, made her interested in semiconductors.[4] She remained focused on the topic for the remainder of her education,[16] spending much of her time in labs designing and adjusting products.[2] After earning her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, she obtained her master's degree from MIT in 1991. From 1990 to 1994[10] she studied for her PhD[2] under MIT advisor Dimitri Antoniadis.[4] MIT Technology Review reports that as a doctoral candidate, Su was "one of the first researchers to look into silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, a then unproven technique for increasing transistors' efficiency by building them atop layers of an insulating material".[4] She graduated with her PhD in electrical engineering[4][9] from MIT in 1994.[4]: wikipedia)
The stock has quadrupled with Lisa.