In the rush to replace Hurd, HP could draw on several top execs.
That cool factor propelled consumers to spend hundreds more for the Apple brand than they would for anything Dell or HP could manufacture.
In both cases HP could have entered the the search and big data environment at a cost of tens of millions, not billions.
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We think such a deal would make sense at the right price, but we are not sure that HP could monetize the asset for a reasonable price.
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Hurd says HP could end up competing with Google, which plans to offer applications software over the Internet and could move into corporate videoconferencing via its recent YouTube acquisition.
Instead, Packard turned his eyes to a renegade manager named Dick Hackborn, who was cocky enough to think that HP could still compete in a brutal, high- volume, low-margin business.
The indictment was filed August 30 but was not previously disclosed, the Journal notes, pointing out that HP could face fines and other penalties if the court finds the company benefited from the alleged crime.
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Equally HP could have made hay with Motorola, ditching Palm and its OS, picking up immediate traction in Android products, following case studies like Samsung that would give executives their bearings in this new world.
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Beyond desktop PCs, HP and others could look to AMD chips, particularly those forthcoming in the third quarter, for use in low-priced server computers running Linux or Windows.
While the goal is a compelling and timely vision, analysts may be disturbed that the costs of taking HP in this direction could be more costly than the additional profit margins can justify.
The acquisition was not so much for Compaq's PC business-- Dell Computer 's (nasdaq: DELL - news - people ) relentless cost-cutting model has taken out most of its competitors' profits there--but in the hope of building a consulting business, particularly in managed services, that could complement HP's highly profitable printing business.
Couple that with souring consumer sentiment, and the sales growth at HP's PC group could start to slow.
Hurd was saying he wanted to build an HP that trained executives who could lead at the highest levels.
If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions.
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We also note that cash flow may not be materially impacted at HP or Xerox since owned inventories could fall near-term.
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Sun, whose sophisticated Unix servers and data center gear competes with HP on the high end, could be hurt as well.
That's a stake of less than 0.3 percent, but their rebuke of Hammergren and Thompson could lead other frustrated HP shareholders to turn against them.
Finally, it has partnered with printer maker Lexmark International (nyse: LXK - news - people ), which, if successful, could potentially eat into HP's biggest profit center, printer ink cartridges.
With HP now the largest PC maker, that could be all AMD needs to reverse its fortune.
Merging with Compaq, she said, would enable HP to reach its goals faster than it could on its own.
Aside from waiting to see if BB10 succeeds or fails, BB10 could be a potential roadblock for HP or another acquirer.
But while this whole story certainly sounds plausible, the unidentifiable device in the gentleman's hand could be anything from an old HP iPaq to a five-dollar tip calculator, so please do your duty as responsible readers and begin dropping your wild theories and baseless debunks into the comments below...
The closer ties with Dell, though, could poison Microsoft's relationship with HP, the largest PC maker, and other manufacturers that buy Windows and other software.
As Palm and then HP found to their cost with WebOS (we could very easily put OpenWebOS into this list of pretenders to the throne), as Blackberry found with the PlayBook, and as even Microsoft has confronted with Windows Phone.
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That could cause some headaches, but at least HP has another headache behind it.
Having witnessed Hewlett-Packard (HP) facing exactly the same issue, Dell could have known how this would go.
Dell, meanwhile, has made great strides in retuning its hardware business toward the enterprise market but continues to wrestle with how to improve the performance of its consumer business, and could face the same sort of disruptive transformation HP is now undergoing.
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