Hewlett Packard Strategy Report

Apple Inc, best known as Apple is an American based global company that designs and sells electronics, PCs and computer software. The company was established in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and was incorporated in 1977. Some of the Apple’s best-known products are the Macintosh range of personal computers, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. By 2012, Apple reported to have more than 300 retail stores located in more than 10 countries in the world and more than 60, 000 employees on permanent employment, and about 2,800 on temporal employment. Despite the success the company, Apple has faced hard competition from other electronics manufacturing companies. The objective of this paper is to develop a strategic plan that will enable Apple improve its position in the personal computer industry. The paper will use Michael Porter’s forces; key success factors, SWOT analysis and the competitive strength to point out specific, workable recommendations that will allow Apple stay afloat and improve its position in the personal computer industry (Gamble & Marino 2012).

HPs business model is advantageous because their customers have more choice in purchasing options, they can buy online, but if they need more assistance they can buy from a store where advice will be provided. Although this is good for the customer, it has detrimental effects on HPs traditional

Changing Market Conditions In the early 1990's, while technological innovation continued to drive the company's success, many business units were being forced to compete on other dimensions. In consumer product lines, low prices, broad availability and ease of use had become competitive requirements. Lew Platt, HP's current President and Chief Executive Officer, once acknowledged the importance of improving customer service and responsiveness, We're not doing as good a job in order fulfillment as we need to. In fact, it's where we get our lowest marks from customers. We have to be a lot easier to do business with. Improvement in order fulfillment will strengthen HP's competitiveness, increase customer satisfaction and reduce expenses, so this is an

HP entered into an agreement with Compaq Computer Corporation in September 2001. In this definitive agreement, HP is going to purchase all of Compaq’s common shares outstanding, and pay a total price of 0.6325 shares of its common stock for each share of Compaq’s common stock.

All of these technological advances by HP receive the attention of Japan and China where HP expanded in hopes of continuing to invent newer and better technologies in the future. Since the 90’s HP has gone on to invent many other firsts like the first all-in-one device and is the first company to recycle ink cartridges. They have also acquired many smaller companies like Snapfish and Compaq to grow the company to being one of the industry leaders in personal computing. (Hewlett-Packard, 2013).

Kudler fine foods is a premium food retailer whose business is primarily based on sales of bakery, meat, seafood, produce, dairy, and wine. It has ambitious plans but the tightening economy threatens its quality proposition and further expansion. A strategic focus on Kudler fine foods is to improve the level of convenience offered to customers. This strategy would enable its customers to buy more of what they want at Kudler fine foods. Facing the fierce global market competition, Kudler fine foods launches the developing innovative choices for consumers. With the concept of customers as “the foundation of

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will concentrate on selling hardware like servers to businesses wanting to build up their data centers while HP Inc. will sell printers and personal computers (Vanian, 2015). This strategy effectively modernizes the scale and scope of the services and systems HP currently offers to its enterprise customers.

In 1989, David Packard, the co-founder of Hewett-Packard put into writing the company’s organizational values which was to be used as the HP’s way and also use as a management tool and as a criteria for daily decision making. These company values have been reinforced by the company’s current CEO, Meg Whitman and they are: 1. Integrating critical opposites- to create an organization that sustain its competitive advantage regardless of the

The PC industry is highly competitive and constantly changing as technology evolves and customer needs change. Some of the top competitors in the PC industry are IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple. Theses rivals are constantly jockeying for the top competitor’s position. They compete in prices, product innovation, advertising, etc.

Carly Fiorina made changes to HP’s culture. This was against what was being practiced all the way long. HP had been found by two engineers and its management methods had been praised over time (Ancona et. al. 14-29) as the company had set the standards by which other high-tech firms were judged. With the legendary success and reputation, HP was not keen in remaking the culture of the company. She made changes to the vision of the company as well by changing it from a company providing stand-alone products to a company that offered customers an integrated suite of information appliances, highly reliable IT infrastructure and e-services. In order to balance the changes in vision and strategy, she had to make changes in the organizational structure too. So she realigned it. (Ancona et. al. 14-30) She marketed HP’s new identity as well. (Ancona et. al. 14-31) She had never worked for HP before. The company’s founders were engineers, she was a marketer. Her expertise was not in operations, it was in sales and marketing. Her critics believed that Carly was a rude outsider who was not following HP’s established practices. She emphasized speed and suggested the merger between Compaq and HP. Some people felt that she was trying to do too much too soon. (Ancona et. al. 14-32) She had not been able to convince Walter Hewlett, a board member and son of co-founder of HP, the advantages of this merging and despite his

However, though Fiorina’s tenure was not a perfect one, board members of HP insisted Fiorina was correct in her vision and strategic plan for HP. Reviewing the company figures, although Fiorina did not meet her own financial target, and the market share of the most lucrative printer business has decreased, HP has obtained larger market share of personal computers (from 7.7% to 15%) and servers ( from 14% to 31.7%) from 1999 to 2004.

In comparison, HP operates in seven segments: Imaging and Printing, Personal Systems, Enterprise Systems, HP Services, HP Financial Services, Software and Corporate Investments and their principal activity is to provide solutions and services to individual consumers and businesses.

Although both companies have diversified into other industries, PC industry is still their most important source of revenue. For years, these two giants are battling for lead in PC market. When measured by market share, HP has taken place of Dell as No.1 seller in PC market since 2007 (FIGURE 1). When measured by revenue, HP also wins over Dell for almost five years (FIGURE 2). Also, Acer grew rapidly in market share partly because of its merger with Gateway in 2007 (Einhorn 2007), and almost matched Dell in 2009.

The company faced issues related to the methods it used in investigating the unauthorized disclosure of nonpublic information to the press by the members of its board of directors. Apparently, Hewlett Packard hired some investigators in the case. The investigator used various techniques such as pre-texting- calling the telephone company and pose as someone else with an aim of obtaining that person’s information or records. The company and the board chairman, Patricia Dunn, were defending the company’s investigations about the director and the journalist. They cited that there were aggressive efforts to note the core source of leaks that were fully justified by the investigators

Micosoft was founded on 4th April 1975 by Bill Gates & Paul Allen and is headquartered in Redmond, Washington (USA). The company provides employment to more than 89000 people. Microsoft recorded revenues of $62000 million in the financial Year 2010 (Microsoft, 2011).