HP Gets Back into Tablets and PCs

HP has announced that it will be back in the PC and Microsoft saddle again. It will be  delivering a Windows 8 tablet according to yet another new CEO, Meg Whitman. But this was a necessary but not sufficient condition for HP’s survival. Abandoning the PC and tablet businesses was a disastrous decision.

HP like Microsoft has to be a major player in the tablet PC game. Tablets are just going to become dockable PCs with touch+gesture operations, long battery life, plus lightweight portability.Still rapidly improving computing power is going to make tablets > laptops and notebooks in performance. Brobdingnagian Workstation PCs for software development, modeling/simulation and high level media creation work will become a niche. The business and consumer PC  maintstream will be dockable tablets. And right now Windows 8 may be the best price performance fit for that Dockable Tablet World. Smart recovery move by HP. But why the hell make the Apotheker appointment?

Marketwatch gives Wall Street’s assessment of the recent HP moves… and they are blunt:

Hewlett-Packard shares were up Friday, a day after the company said it’s keeping its personal computer business, ending speculation that the world’s top PC maker might exit that business…H-P shares gained 3.5% to close at $27.94, the top gainer on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The stock remains deep in negative territory for the year, however, down about 34% as investors have questioned the company’s strategic direction and frequent management upheavals.

“The entire H-P saga of the past 14 months has been among the  saddest and [most] confusing examples of self-inflicted damage that we have seen in our 13 years of Wall Street research,” Richard Kugele of Needham & Co. wrote in a note to clients entitled “A circus without the popcorn.”

Amen.