HP’s share price rose after CEO Meg Whitman announced the company’s five-year plan for reinvention. The well-known Silicon Valley firm has suffered from a slow growth rate and a product line-up that many in the technology community saw as lacking the innovation and long-term focus of its competitors.
While many of its competitors focused on the notebook and mobile market, HP’s primary focus remained consumer desktops. With sales of desktop computers on the decline, the company’s former dominance of the consumer PC market has slid significantly, leaving HP behind many of its former underdog competitors.
CEO Meg Whitman announced a five-year plan to turn around the company to better focus on the growing mobile and notebook markets. HP will revise its product range to better target the needs of modern consumers, as well as partnering with Internet search giant Google in a bid to promote the company’s online application suite.
Google Apps, the Mountain View-based technology company’s suite of productivity applications, is built to compete with Microsoft’s dominant MS Office range. Office is by far the largest player in the office productivity software sector, with Google Apps an inexpensive and effective alternative for small and medium-sized businesses.
HP aims to position its Apps-supported PCs as a ‘small and medium-sized business IT suite in a box.’ The company has showed increased support for Google over the last few years, releasing a $299 notebook running Google’s free Chrome operating system in an effort to increase the Mountain View-based company’s user base.
The company’s new SMB application alliance, as well as its commitment to revising its product range, caused its share price to increase. The company’s share value has increased by 50 percent over the past year, despite sales and profit growth that’s far from ideal.
