CEO Whitman: PCs to Stay, But Fewer Products in HP’s Future - bunchtheepost

Hewlett-Packard has gone direct a rough spell lately, what with weak PC sales, declining profits, an embarrassing CEO dirt involving sex harassment claims and dubious expense reports, and another CEO (Leo Apotheker) acquiring boot afterward less than a year alert.

In Sept 2011, then-HP director and former eBay Chief operating officer Meg Whitman took over as HP primary. She has the unenviable task of nerve-wracking to steer this bloated behemoth back down to profitability.

In a interview Tuesday with AllThingsD's Arik Hesseldahl, Whitman defined her plans to get HP back on track. Hesseldahl's drawn-out Q&A covers a lot of ground, and I encourage you to read IT if you want the nitty-gritty on HP's rebound scheme. I've summarized a few key points at a lower place.

The PC Business Stays

During Apotheker's brief tenure, HP flirted with the theme of spinning off its PC business and focusing on delivering software and services to its high-margin enterprise customers. The moot plan fizzled, however, and Marcus Whitman says Horsepower will keep its huge–if non hugely fat–PC business concern.

"As I insure IT, everything corset. From each one of the pieces jibe together. They are real big and significant businesses in their personal right. The Personal computer stage business is at $40 billion and number 1 in the world," she aforementioned.

Fewer Products

A streamlined HP will reduce the number of products IT sells. "I reckon you testament insure a smaller number of products tailored to specific market segments where we rump bewilder real supply chain leverage, real inventory leverage, and real parts leveraging," aforementioned Whitman. "You forget all but all the spare parts we have to bear on the inventory. I think this is a big part about how we deliver better quality at lower monetary value and deport real benefits to customers."

Layoffs Are Enough–for Straightaway

HP last calendar month announced plans to eliminate 'tween 8 to 10 percent of its global workforce, which means cutting leastways 25,000 jobs. Should Whitman cut even deeper, baseball swing more jobs? No more, she says: "I think it's about the right size. You never know certainly, but we're taking the really scoop analysis that we can… And IT's never easy to reduce the workforce by 27,000 because IT disrupts people's lives. But in my view, we couldn't afford to wait to make the needed investments to set HP up for the next quintuplet long time."

HP Needs a Marketing Makeover

HP, Walt Whitman says, "hasn't been selfsame good at notification its own story." And then should we expect bold, original marketing campaigns targeted at consumer and business customers alike?

White Star sign: Not Interested

After her failed Golden State politician run in 2010, Whitman has had enough of politics for now. And if fellow Republican Mitt Romney wins the U.S. presidential election in November and asks her to sum his cabinet, she North Korean won't go.

"He mightiness call me, but categorically I would not accept. This is a decision I had to make before accepting the subcontract to run HP. You can't land at a company like HP that has gone through what it has asleep through and think that you're only exit to stay 18 months," Whitman said.

Contact Jeff Bertolucci at Today@PCWorld, Twitter (@jbertolucci) or jbertolucci.blogspot.com.