The confused puppies at HP and the amazing Mr. Dell....
Monday's IBD has a great article about Lew Platt's (chief) of HP entitled, "Platt Stands Behind Plan for Cutbacks-Sort of"....
Besides making clear the confusion that is now HP.....
The final two paragraphs read, "HP backed off its claims in late -97 that it plans to become No. 1 in PC sales by late '00. Platt says some of his marketing people got "extra exuberant" over the company's PC market share. The goal is for HP to build a profitable, highly respected business with marketshare a secondary concern", he says...
Analysts say Platt is making that message clear to the ranks.
"(HP) lost $50 million in the PC business last quarter, said ABN Amro's Wu, "All the PC guys went to the woodshed and came out a few inches shorter"....
Now, this from IBD on 5/1/98....
"HP Walking the Walk-So It's Talking the Talk"
First paragraph: Hewlett-Packard isn't satisfied with No.3- or even No. 2. Give us a couple of years, company officials say, and HP will become the largest maker of personal computers in the world......"It will be relatively straightforward for us to become No. 2" McDonnell said. "But our goal is to be no. 1"
....A few comments:
(1) This is another example of a company doing (what I consider) all the wrong things...one: Lew Platt needs to step up to the plate and blame himself, and not his "exuberant" sales people...How I hate CEO's who look for the scapegoat....Don't these people report to him (ultimately)...does he not know what is going on in his own company?
(2) It is clear that HP DID NOT, as the first article excerpt states, end their quest to be No. 1 in computer sales by '00 in late '97....They had this goal going into 2nd quarter of THIS YEAR....Two further points...(1) The writer of Monday's article did a lousy job in research....hell, if I could notice the discrepancy, why couldn't they? Don't they do a search on articles that THEIR NEWSPAPER has written on a particular company to make sure that what they are writing does not contradict what HAS PREVIOUSLY BEEN WRITTEN. This is why we all must be careful with what we read folks...The writer did a poor job here, IMO.
(3) Even though the writer should have caught this, if HP folks are trying to claim that they abandoned this No. 1 goal late last year, they are lying....This "re-writing" of company history would have me concerned if I were a HP shareholder.
Lew Platt's leadership would have me concerned if I were an HP shareholder...
(4) Remember this guy, Jim McDonnell (marketing manager for the company's personal information products division)...He is the same guy who challenged Dell to deliver a unit in less than a week (and lost) in the Fortune article in May? (Inducing Fortune to write a follow-up article which title say that HP ate crow....
(5) It is clear that HP no longer has the stomach for an out-and-out low-ball, get Dell strategy....Dell is simply too dominant, and HP knows it....
Another point that Monday's article makes: Many analysts believe that some shake-up is necessary in HP's upper management. They say decisiveness and fiscal control have been missing since Rick Belluzzo, who ran HP's computer organization, left to head rival Silicon Graphics Inc. in January.....
.....back to Fortune's cover story on Dell, Michael Dell (interviewed in LATE April): "HP just lost Rick Belluzzo. He was their main guy. That's the big HP story now"....
I DON'T KNOW ABOUT ALL OF YOU, BUT I SURE AM GLAD THAT I HAVE MY MONEY ON A GUY AND A COMPANY THAT DO WHAT THEY SAY, HAVE STRONG, UNWAVERING LEADERSHIP, AND INCREDIBLE VISION.......BTO-JIT, INTERNET SALES, KNOWING THEIR COMPETITORS INSIDE OUT...THE STORY JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER....
John (Kemble in drag today) |
