Will HP bring down IBM?

Watch out for IBM, HP's revenue and profit have never grown so strong today, despite the murky scandal.

Hewlett-Packard is taking a big step towards the title of the world's largest technology firm. On November 17, the company announced the fourth-quarter record high and expected revenue, likely to surpass IBM's revenue (closing on December 31).

" This is a pivotal year for HP. All business units work very well, very efficiently ," Mark Hurd said in a press release.

Source: BusinessWeek HP's staggering business results over the years have quenched many of these interrogators for years. For the past 10 years, investors have been wondering whether HP is too "sophisticated" to be unable to manage. Nearly all of the company's profits are contributed by one-handed printer parts, more specifically, by the ink business.

But the situation is different from the last fiscal quarter. All of HP's key business units took off.

Horizontal talent

Even corporate computing, a division that often suffered losses in the past, also increased revenue by 4% and achieved a 42% profit. Two weak areas of "peak" of HP are computers and software also showed impressive growth steps. While PC reached a record of 10% revenue increase, software revenue increased by 14%.

The fact that all the parts were eating made it possible for the entire HP machine to bloom. Total revenue grew 7.2% to $ 24.6 billion in the quarter - an impressive figure for a firm of the same size. Expanding throughout the year, HP will earn $ 91.7 billion, up 6% from last year.

Although IBM has not closed the fiscal year of 2006, but according to analysts' estimates, the company's annual revenue is hard to overcome the huge "91.7 billion mountain". This means that HP is likely to overtake IBM to become the King of the technology market.

Hurd also raised its earnings forecast in the first quarter of 2007 to $ 24.2 billion. Please note that this is the 5th consecutive quarter he has been able to do this happy job of adjustment. Hurd's revenue was recorded at 97 billion USD for the whole year of 2007.

Servers and laptops

Despite the eavesdropping scandal, HP still won brilliantly in terms of revenue.The company passed Dell to become the PC market champion in the third quarter, will IBM be the next downgraded king?Source: CNET

It can be said that HP has made good use of opportunities and trends that dominate the technology field at the present time. As the revenue of high-end storage devices and servers based on old proprietary technologies has declined, HP has adjusted the strategy in a timely and reasonable way about the "server business". ", especially blade server.

Most businesses prefer this type of server because they are both cheap and save power significantly. With server sales with its storage devices, services and software, HP rose to become a formidable competitor to IBM in the eyes of corporate customers. This is even more true when HP can successfully integrate the technology of Mercury Interactive (the company they acquired) into its product package.

On the other hand, in the context of Dell falling off with the explosion of a laptop battery problem, HP is indeed the best beneficiary. Its revenue in the fourth quarter increased by 10% to $ 7.8 billion, when all competitors dreamed not to think of double-digit growth.

IBM withdrew from the PC market, Dell was busy chasing the corporate market, HP became the only giant to care about consumers with a range of popular desktop and laptop products. Laptop sales increased by 24% and HP was the dominant name in the US as well as emerging markets such as India, Russia and Brazil. Most importantly, last October, HP surpassed Dell to become the personal computer market champion in the third quarter of 2006.

Not only that, HP is trying to take advantage of its new position in the PC district to penetrate the consumer electronics space. For example, a new model of networked TV can display digital photos, videos or music that a computer sends, even though the PC is now in another room.

Stop and breathe

With the entire machine running smoothly, soundly, Hurd and colleagues now have the freedom to manage HP in a different way. Previously, in the past, officials were only allowed to think of how to make the most profit from printers, but did not dare to invest heavily in other departments. For example, problems in the corporate computing department in 2003-2004 forced HP to moderate competition policies for its printer prices to ensure revenue targets.

Now they won't have to be so shy. Suddenly, HP became a sitting giant thinking how to unleash the power of all his body, instead of scratching his head to avoid losing money like the old days.

Trong Cam