According to media reports (e.g. see FT), HP CEO, Meg Whitman, painted a gloomy picture of the company’s recovery prospects, indicating that a turnaround could take up to five years. Speaking at HP’s annual customer event in Las Vegas (I assume the venue was booked long before the most recent ‘troubles’ – perhaps somewhere in the Nordics would have been more in keeping with the dark tone of her message), Whitman was particularly cautious about HP’s European business.
The problem with HP is that there’s not just one problem. HP has many moving parts which, far from meshing, often seem to be counter-rotating. Each of its major divisions has its own significant challenges, whether it’s software post-Autonomy (see Autonomy - The day after), PCs (sans credibility and sans tablets), printers (“we missed a couple of (product) cycles”) and of course services (no more ‘miracle margins’ - see here).
Each division and each country market will require experienced leadership to fix the innards, while Whitman tries to make some sense of the ‘outtards’. This is not ‘mission impossible’ – just ‘mission very tricky indeed’. HP still has prime position in many markets, not the least of which here in the UK (see UK SITS Rankings 2012). As far as possible, Whitman should leave the running of the country markets to its leaders, and make sure their voices are heard loud and clear in terms of the products and services – and pricing – that are right for their market.
And on the bright side, maybe Whitman can worry just a little bit less about Europe. With Leo Apotheker now dispensing pearls of wisdom to the Steria board (see Leo to 'supervise' Steria), perhaps that’s one less competitor she needs to keep such a close eye on.