The final brewing tragedy at the door of IT** - HP Decline Secret

In the past 20 years, no industry has been "heroes" like the IT industry, but at the same time it is changing so many great companies have risen in a short period of time. There are also some giants who have once collapsed.

In 2012, it was also the year that the IT industry changed its head. A new wave of IT revolution swept across Hong Kong, where the flood peaks have undergone a revolutionary restructuring of the IT industry: There are rebirths in the Jedi, leading the trend and leading the trend, but also the former super giants at the door to change. , was flooded by the tide.

Transformation has become one of the keywords for the 2012 IT industry. However, in this wave of transformation, many former "big brothers" have been hard-hearted, such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), and they are still wandering on the road of transformation; if they are once the boss of the domestic mobile phone industry, they are deeply trapped in the transition. "The lack of a main business" strange; and not long ago in the field of mobile phones is not the same as Nokia, then sold on the road to reduce the weight of the headquarters to continue to be lost ... ... These former IT industry empire, is now the empire It's embarrassing.

Standing in front of the door in 2013, reviewing and analyzing the paths of these "giants" is like opening a textbook for the transformation of the IT industry. Taking this as a guide, it may help us to see the future of IT transformation.

Recently, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers said in an interview with Cisco headquarters that the current IT revolution in the world of mobile devices and sensors is causing huge impact on tech giants such as Microsoft, IBM, HP, SAP, Oracle, and Cisco. Impact. It is predicted that 2 to 3 of the above 6 technology giants will be listed on the list of giants in the next five years.

It is worth noting that HP will likely become one of the "2-3 homes" in Chambers's mouth.

"Daily Economic News" reporter found that after a rough statistics, on December 10, HP's total market capitalization has been lowered to $27.841 billion, which is a decrease from the market value of $10.372 billion on November 8, 2010, nearly 25 months ago. Nearly 72%. Based on the US dollar-to-renminbi exchange rate on December 10, in the past two years, HP's total market value has “run” nearly 600 million yuan each day.

The total market value of Hewlett-Packard's "beats and turns" is precisely the real portrayal of the company's current situation: under the background of the transformation of the IT industry, the company's transformation strategy continues to wander, resulting in the consumer market "can not keep it" and the corporate market "attack Do not enter the abdominal and back pressure in the dilemma.

Hewlett-Packard first-level agent to sell Acer products for survival

Zhou Yang (anonymous) is a sales manager of Hewlett-Packard's first-tier agent in Beijing. However, in early November macro? At a product launch, Zhou Yang's company and macro? Signed related product cooperation agreement. For the reason, Zhou Yang explained to the reporter of “Daily Economic News”: “In the past ten years, only HP has been done, but now Hewlett-Packard is not able to hang on a tree.”

Zhou Yang's company, founded in 2000, has a total of 11 stores in Beijing and is well known in the national IT channel business circle. In the most brilliant 2008-2009 year, Zhou Yang's company sold HP Computer's annual shipments of about 25 million yuan, becoming the China's national diamond channel provider for Hewlett-Packard China. "HP's various trophies can be filled with three Glass cabinets. Zhou Yang said.

However, the beauty of all this has become history. According to Zhou Yang, since the CCTV “3·15” party was exposed in the HP notebook related quality issues in 2010, HP’s brand value has fallen as steep as a cliff, and sales have dropped. The rise of e-commerce channels represented by the “6·18” price war this year forced offline agents to lower their prices again. As a result, they not only lost the competitiveness of Hewlett-Packard’s products, but also enabled Lenovo’s PC products that are price-competitive. Absolutely competitive. "From 2008 to 2009, Jingdong still offered us HP's PC goods. Generally, the amount of goods for the year was more than RMB 1 million. But now this situation has not happened." Zhou Yang smiled and said, "From August Initially, the price of HP's PCs fell further due to the price war of electricity suppliers, and the monthly sales volume of HP's home and business PCs has dropped to 5,000 units, and in the best-selling 2008 or 2009, monthly sales reached 10,000. Around the time, sales of HP notebooks have fallen even further, with current monthly sales of about 2,000 units, and in 2008 or 2009, monthly sales are also around 10,000 units.”

According to Zhou Yang, his company generally signed a sales plan for the next quarter with Hewlett-Packard for the next quarter. If the expected sales volume is not reached after a quarter, HP will correspondingly reduce the company's relevant policy support, such as store subsidies, product models, etc., of which HP returned store subsidies, generally accounting for the company's rent and other costs of nearly 60 %. "In the current situation of poor sales, in order to complete the corresponding amount, the company will even lose money and throw in order to gain support."

Zhou Yang was a bit helpless. “Now we rarely visit the stores and we don’t have the sight of lining up before.” Even on the weekends, there aren’t many people patronizing. “Don’t talk about buying, consulting people are rare.” Zhou Yang is now. Where do you want to go through a proxy macro? The related products, in order to expand the company's business category, seek to change the dilemma of the decline in company performance.

Coincidentally, recently, as a consumer, the reporter discovered during the investigation of the Tiantongyuan Store in Beijing's Suning District that Lenovo and Acer could be seen at the PC counter on the first floor of the store. , ASUS, Dell, Tongfang and other brands of products, but not only HP's PC products. Asked why, the sales manager in charge of the counter bluntly stated that HP's PC sales are too small and it is barely on the shelves.

Losing the Champion Throne in the Loss and Propagation between PC and Mobile Internet

Compared with Zhou Yang’s company’s poor sales, the US’s third-quarter PC sales data released by Gartner’s information technology consultancy and research company showed that Lenovo’s 15.7% global market share surpassed HP’s 15.5%. The throne, this is the first time in 2006 that Hewlett-Packard overtook Dell to become the global PC industry leader and lost the championship. In addition to market share exceeded by Lenovo, HP's PC industry profits are equally slippery: According to HP's fourth quarter 2012 financial report (US fiscal year from October 1 to end on September 30 next year) data show that the company's PC The income of the personal system department where the business was located fell by 14% year-on-year, and the operating profit margin was only 3.5%.

In this regard, IT media people Shen Yao explained to the reporter of “Daily Economic News” that the failure of HP’s PC industry was the result of the company’s strategic shift to the PC business during the transition process.

The reporter noted that on September 4, 2001, HP's most powerful printer business began to slow down, and other business advantages were gradually flattened. Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly used to stabilize the consumer market base. The strategy used a $25 billion gambling giant to acquire Compaq, which combined the two super brands of PCs, printers and servers, and sought to find a way to self-help by strengthening its competitiveness in the consumer market.

At the same time, IBM, which was also facing a slowdown in PC business growth at the time, is reducing its investment in the consumer market and is fully committed to transforming the corporate market with higher profit margins.

At the time, IBM began to abandon the PC, and HP through different ways to strengthen the PC business self-help. In an interview with the “Daily Economic News” reporter, the original IT community Donews editor Hong Bo analysis said that at the time the profit margin of the PC industry was becoming increasingly small, and as a low profit industry PC, its industry is shifting to lower labor costs in Asia . When IBM saw this trend, it took a "retreat" approach to its PC business, and HP did not seize this opportunity, still take the "get it" approach to save itself, missed the transformation of the good fighter.

The acquisition of Compaq was also negated by the then capital market. HP's market value shrank by nearly $5 billion in two days after the two companies were announced. Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Fortuna criticized this: "There is no possibility of a premium at this transaction. If I were a Compaq shareholder, I would be disappointed with this transaction that coincides with the product."

In the end, this acquisition led directly to Carly's resignation. After that, it even came to pass that Hewlett-Packard had to split the deteriorating PC business.

In April 2005, Mark Hurd, who took over from Carly, did not cut off the PC business, but insisted on the development of the PC business. However, through cost-saving reforms such as internal layoffs and other measures, he surpassed that in 2006. Dell took the throne of the global PC industry leader, once again missed the opportunity for transformation.

Ai Keke who took office in November 2010, whose transformation path almost overturned the concept of the first two terms and actively transformed to IBM's path: Hewlett-Packard announced on August 18, 2011 that it was considering to spin off the PC business and at the same time, it was transformed into a corporate market. In response to the need, HP announced the acquisition of Autonomy, the largest software company in the United Kingdom, for $10.3 billion.

The decision to transition to IBM ultimately led Apotheker to push the HP CEO's throne. Hewlett-Packard's transformation once again ended in loitering. On September 23, 2011, Whitman, who had just taken office, said in an interview with foreign media that she planned to adhere to the strategy formulated by her predecessor, Li Aike, because she believed that investors were more inclined to stable corporate leadership than management turmoil. disturbed.

On October 28 last year, Whitman issued a statement saying that taking into account the high cost of spin-off PC business, will change the previous decision, choose to continue to retain the company's PC department, and that the PC sector is "HP's core assets." . However, at present, this "HP's core assets" has been compromised by Lenovo.

In an interview with the "Daily Economic News" reporter, Xie Wen, the former general manager of Yahoo China, said, "It's not important to cut off the PC, but just to die." He continued, "HP is not keeping up with the trend now." Businesses that are not in line with the direction of market development will be less and less competitive, leaving behind the PC department to leave “heart disease.” This echoes the fact that HP’s fourth-quarter PC business was in 2012. The personal system department's operating profit margin was only 3.5%. UBMTechInsights, a U.S. market research company, estimates that Apple’s iPad 2 models have a profit margin of 56%.

In addition to the loss of the original pillar business PC, Hewlett-Packard has also failed to find a barrier to entry because of strategic loitering in the new mobile smartphone era. Even if it does not enter, it is still wandering.

It is worth noting that the launch of the Apple iPad in 2010 accelerated the pace of the post-PC era. It was under such pressure that on April 29th of that year, HP acquired Palm, a smartphone maker, for $1.2 billion in cash. At this point, Huipeng borrowed Palm and its webOS mobile operating system to enter the mobile terminal. Prior to this, HP's opponents? PC makers such as Dell, Lenovo, and Lenovo have already entered the field of smartphones.

However, Apotheker, who took office in November 2010, announced on August 18, 2011 that he would stop producing webOS-based smartphones and tablets based on his consideration of IBM's transformation path. This means that HP automatically closed the smartphone industry. The door.

Today's Hewlett-Packard is in the background of the unclear transformation strategy. In September, Whitman said in an interview with FoxBusinessNetwork that HP needs to launch a smart phone, "We are doing this work" to avoid missing out on "this huge market segment."

However, one month later, when asked again at the company analysts meeting, Whitman admitted that her previous remarks really caused a "fantastic disturbance." And clearly pointed out, "We do not plan to launch smart phones next year. But we have begun to consider what is unique about us and how to seize this personal computing market segmentation factor."

The inconsistency between words and deeds and decision-making shows that Whitman has no clear development strategy in this field for the time being.

For HP's layout on the mobile side, unlike Whitman's wobbly, in an interview with the Daily Economic News reporter, HP spokesman Michael Thacker said: "We We are committed to developing a portfolio of mobile computing devices and solutions for our customers. This includes smart phones." "In the short term we focus on the development of tablets, which are our long-term goals. With the coverage of computing devices We believe that HP will eventually be among the smart phone market because it is an indispensable factor for our development."

At the same time, when Hewlett-Packard was still tangled in the hardware layout of smart phones, on December 13th, according to Forbes, Dell, who had made every effort to transform into a corporate market, had decided to withdraw from the smart phone market without a competitive advantage.

Whitman New Deal blocked by $10.3 billion "Acquisition Gate"

When the PC industry in the base camp fell, and the upstart mobile terminal layout remained in turmoil, HP's layout in the corporate market was severely hampered.

On November 20, 2012, Hewlett-Packard exposed a “home ugly”. Hewlett-Packard issued a statement on the day: An internal company survey found that some former Autonomy executives used improper accounting standards, inadequate disclosure of information, and misrepresentations, misleading HP's valuation of Autonomy's acquisition on August 18, 2011. HP was forced to make a $8.8 billion reduction in assets for this deal, with more than $5 billion in deductions due to Autonomy’s “serious” breach of accounting rules.

It is worth noting that on August 18 last year, HP announced a strategic acquisition of Autonomy, a British software developer, at a high price of 10.3 billion US dollars to support enterprise transformation in order to compete positively with competitors such as IBM in the corporate market.

The reporter noted that this purchase price is equivalent to approximately 37% of Hewlett-Packard’s market value of US$27,841 million on December 10. It can be seen that the high cost of this acquisition can be described as "not to spare". At the time, Autonomy was also considered a super weapon for HP to knock on the door to a high-profit corporate market.

However, HP suddenly dropped 8.8 billion U.S. dollars for this transaction. Calculated at the then purchase price of 10.3 billion U.S. dollars, the value of the subtotal was as high as nearly 85% of the purchase price, and it was basically pronounced that the acquisition was "deadlocked."

“A strategically acquired huge sum of investment has been suspected of being false accounts. It is very strange.” Hong Bo commented that HP’s management had such a strategic acquisition to support transformation in the absence of a transformation strategy and the decline in HP’s performance. The strange thing is actually the impulsive punishment that the management suffered after being rushed to the doctor.

After Autonomy’s acquisition of the door was revealed, HP CEO Whitman was extremely embarrassed. Although presided over the acquisition is the former CEO Li Aike, but Apotheker on December 14 through an e-mail statement issued by Bloomberg stated: "The HP Board of Directors led by the chairman had repeatedly audited this transaction and agreed to pass This transaction," Whitman, who had been on the board of directors at the time, and her vote of approval, made it difficult to escape the incident.

After the incident, Whitman defended for the first time, arguing that Autonomy executives deliberately misled HP shareholders and management. In an interview with CNBC, he even said, “I regret voting to approve the acquisition of Autonomy's transaction.” And recently, in the corporate market, there is not much of a bargaining chip, but she had to vote for the acquisition of Autonomy "support vote."

On December 5, at the HP Discover conference in Frankfurt, Germany, Whitman once again reiterated the company's investment in the troubled Autonomy software sector and stated that Autonomy "will play an important role in our development strategy."

In an interview with the Daily Economic News reporter, HP spokesperson Michael Sacker also expressed his unashamed tactics in the software field represented by Autonomy. Sacker said that the hardware infrastructure is still the core business of HP. Although the company does not plan to transform into a pure software company, the software business is still crucial to the overall strategy of HP.

Sacker also quoted George Cardie, executive vice president of Hewlett-Packard Software Group, as saying at the Hewlett-Packard Securities analysts conference that the enterprise software market will continue to grow and is expected to reach a market value of $54 billion in 2015. Hewlett-Packard Software Group will also focus on integrating acquired businesses and technologies with existing software products to achieve innovation in the areas of cloud management, security, big data, and semantic-based computing, and become the sixth-largest software company in the world.

Although ambition is still there, the reality is "bone." In the wake of the strategic acquisition failure of Autonomy, HP's layout in the corporate market has lost direction.

At present, Dell is also seeking a transition, the strategy is more clear: Dell's latest release of the third quarter of fiscal year 2013 financial report shows that Dell's enterprise solutions and services business has contributed to the company's gross margin of more than half.

Recently, at the Dell China Summit Forum, Dell's vice president and chief marketing officer, Karen Quintos, pointed out that in the past few years, Dell has made 20 acquisitions and transformed Dell from a PC hardware manufacturer to an end-to-end whole. IT Solution Provider.

The PC industry in the main camp consumer market has fallen, and the mobile terminal layout has failed to keep up with the pace of the mobile Internet. The consumer market of HP has shown a trend of “unstoppable”. The layout of the corporate market has been frustrated by the strategic acquisition of Autonomy. After being trapped in the "attack can not enter" dilemma, since then, Whitman insisted that the "two-pronged strategy" of "left-handed consumer market, right-handed attack on the corporate market" persists in the face of back pressure.

This dilemma is also reflected in the latest financial report. HP's fourth quarter 2012 financial report data showed that personal system revenue fell 14% year-on-year, printing group revenue fell 5% year-on-year, service group revenue fell 6% year-on-year, and enterprise server, storage and internet group (ESSN) revenues fell 9% year-on-year. Only the software and financial services group saw an increase in two businesses. This led to a 7% year-on-year decrease in net revenue for the quarter and a net loss of $6.9 billion.

In the past two years, the total market value has "slipped away" the "nearly three Hewlett-Packard"

Hong Bo believes that HP had a “transition theory” in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, due to its lack of a long-term transformation plan, HP has continued to wander on the road of transformation.

This kind of transformational wandering, manifested in the capital market is the stock price continues to fall.

"Daily Economic News" reporter compiled from Bloomberg data and found that on December 10, HP's total market value has dropped to 27.841 billion US dollars, compared with the market value of 156.123 billion U.S. dollars on April 7, 2000, the decline rate has reached nearly 82%. From the range, the concentration time range of HP's total market value decline has mainly occurred in the past two years: November 8, 2010 HP's total market value remained at 100.372 billion U.S. dollars, compared with 156.123 billion U.S. dollars on April 7, 2000. In comparison, the decline rate was only 36% in 10 years. The total market value of US$27.841 billion on December 10 compared to the US$100.372 billion on November 8, 2010 has fallen by nearly 72% in the past two years. This decline is about 2 times the decline in the previous decade. . In other words, in the past two years, HP's total market value is accelerating evaporation, and the current HP's total market value has evaporated "nearly three today's HP" compared with nearly two years ago. If you calculate the exchange rate on December 10, you can roughly find that in the past two years, HP's total market value has "run" nearly 600 million yuan each day.

For the reasons for the accelerated decline in HP's share price in the past two years, Hong Bo pointed Apple behind the scenes. He further added that HP's transformational pressure and its associated transformational loitering have been a long time ago. It was just Apple's launch of the iPad in 2010 that highlighted HP's transformational pressure and strategic loitering.

It is worth noting that in recent years, the total market value of Hewlett-Packard has been depreciating and the market value of high-tech companies such as IBM and Apple, which had forged the PC, has risen against the trend and formed two distinct reverse curves.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Apple, which was still in the PC industry as the main business, was once on the verge of bankruptcy. Jobs' return at the end of 1996 and the subsequent launch of Apple, Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad led the IT industry. At the same time of a disruptive revolution, Apple’s total market capitalization also rose accordingly: Bloomberg data showed that on December 12, 1980, the total market value of Apple was 1.778 billion U.S. dollars, and the total market value of Apple on September 30, 2000 was only Nearly 8.644 billion U.S. dollars, which rose about 4.9 times in 20 years.

Since then, especially under the impetus of iPhone and iPad, its total market value has soared. On September 30, 2012, it surged to about 626.55 billion U.S. dollars, rising nearly 72.5 times in 12 years. On December 10th, although its total market value has fallen back to 498.4 billion U.S. dollars, it has risen nearly 58 times in the past 12 years compared with the total market value on September 30, 2000.

IBM, which was once the king of the PC industry, has also emerged from a rising path that is contrary to HP's market value: On May 1, 2005, IBM formally sold the PC division to Lenovo. After the "broken arm", IBM's market value was all the way. Maintain a stable upward trend. Bloomberg data shows that on December 31, 2005, IBM’s total market value was approximately US$129.4 billion. After five years, it climbed to nearly US$180.2 billion on December 31, 2010, and nearly US$213.9 billion on December 31, 2011. On the 10th of the month, the total market value continued to climb to US$217.65 billion, which was nearly 1.68 times the total market value of December 31, 2005.

Both IBM and Apple were the kings of the PC industry. Through the transition, they successfully staged a commercial script for the return of the king. Kai-Fu Lee, the CEO of Innovation Factory, once said with emotion: “When everyone thought that Apple and IBM were in the dark, they did not expect them. Not only resurrection, but also rise."

However, Hewlett-Packard, which was once the king of the PC industry, is still deeply immersed in the transition and confusion.

Hewlett-Packard transformed into a big dilemma

Hewlett-Packard, in transition, has fallen into a similar dilemma as Shanda: The grand success of the game, and the turbulent strategy in the transition process, has led to the entry of the set-top boxes in the living room market and mobile phones as the representative of mobile users. During this period, the gaming business of its stronghold business has been overtaken by Tencent, Netease and Sohu.

"Daily Economic News" reporter noted that due to the Hewlett-Packard transformation path has been wandering, resulting in Mark Hurd in April 2005 as the company's CEO since more than 7 years ago, has been replaced by three CEOs. The frequency shift of the company’s chief executives has also aggravated the further loitering of the HP strategy.

For example, during the tenure of Mark Hurd, he conducted two important layout acquisitions, namely the acquisition of 3com, a communications company, for US$2.7 billion, to compete with Cisco in the corporate market, and the acquisition of an old smartphone manufacturer for US$1.2 billion in another acquisition. Palm to layout mobile.

However, Mark Hurd's next appointment, Apotheker, almost gave up the assets of the two heavy gold purchases. In particular, he gave up Palm and its webOS. As a result, Hewlett-Packard could not find any entry point in the mobile Internet market. Hewlett-Packard is in a dilemma for the strategic layout of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers.

Unlike the CEO of the HP frequency change company, Apple and IBM, who used to be in transition, are the leading players in the transition. They are Jobs and Gerstner, and Dell, who is still in transition, is the founder of the company. . Lenovo Group is also basically dominated by Liu Chuanzhi and Yang Yuanqing.

The wandering of Hewlett-Packard's transformation strategy has also spawned another strange business image: acquisitions often fail. For example, last year, Hewlett-Packard's purchase of Palm for 2010 decreased by US$900 million; in August of this year, Hewlett-Packard’s asset reduction in a service business unit acquired when EDS was acquired for US$13.9 billion on August 26, 2008 was nearly US$8 billion. Hewlett-Packard also recently reduced the amount of $8.8 billion for the acquisition of Autonomy last year.

A statistics from Bloomberg shows that since December 2007, Hewlett-Packard has invested up to 31 billion U.S. dollars in acquisitions. On the other hand, Hewlett-Packard has also made a goodwill impairment loss of 35.6 billion U.S. dollars for this acquisition of 31 billion U.S. dollars. . In other words, the $31 billion invested in acquisition funds was nearly 111% of the $27,841 million in market value of Hewlett-Packard on December 10, while the acquisition of goodwill of $35.6 billion was approximately 118% of the $31 billion in acquisition funds.

"Nothing to think about doing anything well, it is easy to fail to acquire nature." Shen Yao pointed out that the frequent replacement of management led to the sway of Hewlett-Packard's overall development strategy, and the insignificant acquisition effect further exacerbated this swing.

For Hewlett-Packard, who is still wandering in transition, in early October, MarketWatch columnist John C. Dvorak once wrote that: “IBM knows where his business is and knows that business is not on handheld devices or tablets. Now, we are the time. Ask Hewlett-Packard to ask them to explain exactly what they are doing.HP seems to be always on the ground, and it is impossible to get out of its past. Their enthusiastic embrace is now the concept of the post-PC era, but it cannot be re-positioned. Determine the appropriate new goal."

Hong Bo believes that the reasons for this current status of Hewlett-Packard are manifold, but the lack of strategic masters, problems in enterprise management, and the decline in innovation capabilities are among the reasons that cannot be ignored.

Industry voice

Wandering HP: Does Apple still embrace IBM?

Daily Economic News reporter Zhang Sifa from Beijing

The former general manager of Yahoo China, Xie Wen, dissected to the reporter of “Daily Economic News”. Hewlett-Packard’s wandering HP is somewhat similar to Yahoo China in transition. “It is also a headless fly.”

"Daily Economic News" reporter found after many interviews that in the era of mobile Internet, the transformation of traditional PC companies, in a broad sense, there have been two successful paths: the apple model based on the consumer market and the corporate market as Basecamp's IBM model. The former represents Apple, Lenovo, Macro? Asus, etc. The latter model is represented by IBM.

In order to discuss the deep reasons behind the turmoil in HP's transformation and the future direction of HP's transformation, the reporters respectively talked to Xie Wen, IT media person Shen Yao and the original IT community Donews editor Hong Bo.

"Daily Economic News" reporter (hereinafter referred to as NBD): Hewlett-Packard has been wandering in the process of transformation, resulting in this kind of "strategic loitering" is the essential reason?

Shen Yao: In a company, capital has the final say. Hewlett-Packard's board of directors has a number of external investment institutions that have engaged third parties to participate in the board of directors and participate in HP-related decisions. These people do not necessarily understand Hewlett-Packard's corporate culture, leading to non-independent external capital management companies. Once these external capitals experience a decline in performance, they will naturally replace the CEO. Each CEO has his own style and strategy. When the channel dealers follow the New Deal, each time the CEO is replaced, it will lead to policy changes and channels will change again. As a result, the company’s management and market partners represented by the channel distributors have become increasingly distrustful and disjointed, which further exacerbates corporate loitering and hinders the implementation of relevant policies. Another reason may be due to internal related struggles including HP's board of directors and management, leading to strategic wandering.

Hong Bo: It is easy for companies with problems to constantly change their management. However, for each CEO, because of limited term of office, it will only focus on the baton of the board of directors and consider little about the company’s long-term strategy, which will lead to the company’s short-sighted decision making. Policies will aggravate strategic wandering.

NBD: Why has HP repeatedly missed the opportunity for transformation?

Hong Bo: First, it was difficult for the ship to turn around. Second, the lack of a long-term plan in the capital layer led to trial and error in the frequency-changing CEO. After each CEO took office, he sought a balance of short-sightedness under various pressures, resulting in the arrival of opportunities. There must be determination and time to complete.

NBD: How should HP's transition go?

Xie Wen: Either move closer to the IBM path and gradually shift from selling hardware to solution providers. However, such a turn is actually quite large. Not only will the corporate structure change, the CEO may have to replace it, both to test its capabilities and to see if the market can give enough room to support its transformation.

Or take the Apple model and switch to hardware areas where Hewlett-Packard excels, such as cloud computing, big data, and servers. They have a basic printer, and I suggest that we should work hard on 3D printing. This is the mainstream.

Hong Bo: HP has the ability to choose the IBM path. HP is different from Dell. Dell has made direct sales and there is no enterprise market. So it is difficult to peel off the PC, otherwise it may be nothing. Hewlett-Packard is the flag of Silicon Valley and is known for its innovative ability. Hewlett-Packard has always had an enterprise-class market in its business map. Therefore, after choosing the IBM route, he is fully capable of smashing a blood road.

NBD: Why did Whitman choose the "two-line strategy" of "left-handed consumer market and right-handed enterprise market". This seems to be a bit of a problem for both Apple and IBM?

Shen Yao: Whitman insists on this strategy at present, and wants to put HP back on track before implementing the transformation. Therefore, the current strategy is intended to stabilize rather than seek change.

NBD: How did HP and Jobs, both highly admired by Jobs and Liu Chuanzhi, lead HP's current dilemma?

Hong Bo: Hewlett-Packard's history is older, and the founder's pursuit of a technology-oriented culture is no longer. At present, every CEO who is under pressure from his term of office, his business goals after he took office are to make rapid expansion and make money. This has caused HP's innovation ability to decline in recent years, and it is lagging behind the times.

Xie Wen: Hewlett-Packard is too loitering on the way to transformation, resulting in a lot of missed opportunities, so that in the era of rapid mobile Internet era, HP's transformation layout is too late.

The pain of HP's transformation can be described as profound. It is worth noting that the two industrial revolutions currently taking place in Asia may also force related companies to transform again: one for the mobile Internet revolution, and the other is that the second manufacturing shift in Asia is taking place. This time, Japan and South Korea moved to China and other places, and the second time it was possible to move from China to Southeast Asia.

It can be noted that for the first industrial revolution, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, HTC, etc., mainly dealt with by adding.

Taking Lenovo as an example, an insider of Lenovo, who asked not to be named, told the “Daily Economic News” reporter that Lenovo’s strategy to embrace the mobile Internet era is “defend and attack.” The specific implementation is the PC+ strategy.

The Acer, Asus, HTC, etc. are also adopting a similar addition strategy in the mainland. However, the main stumbling point of this strategy is the low cost of the Chinese labor force and the improvement of the manufacturing chain. At present, a wave of manufacturing shifts to Southeast Asia, though The trend is still not obvious, but it has become obvious. If you do not advance the layout as early as possible, the future may be able to reproduce the dilemma of HP today.