Anyone notice this pr? I just read it and wondered what others thoughts were. Especially as to HP GIVING AWAY servers??
Palo Alto, California, Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Hewlett- Packard Co., the world's No. 2 computer maker, said top online retailer Amazon.com Inc. bought Hewlett computers for the first time, choosing them over machines from Sun Microsystems Inc.
Amazon.com said it installed Hewlett's V-Class servers to handle the expected holiday surge in shoppers on its Web site. As part of the agreement, Amazon.com will offer more of Hewlett's printers, scanners, digital cameras and other consumer products on its site.
Winning Amazon.com's business is a coup for Hewlett, whose growth in server sales has been trailing that of rival Sun Micro. Sun's sales of the powerful machines that run computer networks have been rising faster because many of its clients are ''dot-com'' companies that are adding lots of servers.
''Amazon.com is reliant not only on being 'up and running' all the time, but having the products people want,'' Ann Livermore, president of Hewlett's enterprise and commercial business, said in a statement.
Hewlett shares were unchanged at 96 in late trading. The stock has risen 41 percent this year. Amazon.com shares fell 5 11/16 to 84 3/4 and have risen 58 percent this year.
Sun Microsystems wasn't immediately available to comment.
Catching Up
Hewlett Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, who joined the company in July, is trying to catch up with Sun with a new ''e-services'' strategy, under which Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett is giving servers to young Internet companies in exchange for a percentage of their sales or an equity stake, or both.
Earlier this month, Fiorina said she was calling on employees to boost sales and earnings 12 percent to 15 percent in the fiscal year that began Nov. 1. She made the statement on a call with analysts where she discussed earnings for the fourth quarter ended Oct. 31.
Seattle-based Amazon.com, which has about 13 million customers, already sells some models of Hewlett printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators and other products. The retailer said it received 2.5 times as many orders this Thanksgiving weekend as it did a year earlier.
''We've had a relationship with H-P in the past,'' said Richard Chin, Amazon.com's group product manager for consumer electronics. ''This is a major shift toward a closer partnership with them and a commitment to using a much deeper set of their technology.''
Amazon.com now will receive Hewlett's consumer merchandise directly, instead of via distributor. That means that ''as new H-P products come out, they will be very rapidly available on our Web site,'' Chin said.
Nov/30/1999 |
