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HP expected to post strong quarterly earnings
Hewlett Packard logo at company headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.
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TEXT OF STORY
JEREMY HOBSON: Lots of interesting corporate earnings today, including Macy's, Wal Mart and Barnes and Noble. Hewlett Packard will report after the market closes. Last summer the company was caught in the middle of a sexual harassment scandal that forced the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd.
With a look at how the company is faring under its new leader Leo Apotheker, here's reporter Sally Herships.
SALLY HERSHIPS: Many analysts expect HP to post strong results today. But Crawford Del Prete with IDC says Leo Apotheker can't take all the credit.
CRAWFORD DEL PRETE: He deserves the credit for keeping the team stable, but really it's not as if we saw major changes in the strategy over the last quarter.
Instead, Del Prete says, it's the staff Apotheker inherited.
DEL PRETE: That management team had their boss leave in a big transition and continued to execute really, really well.
Del Prete says the team has overseen development of new products, like a touchpad tablet, due out this summer. Apothker is the former CEO of software maker SAP. And he wants HP, a company still better known for printers, to focus more on software.
SHANE GREENSTEIN: They're not known for this.
Shane Greenstein teaches technology industry management at Northwestern University.
GREENSTEIN: So a big question for anybody who watches them is whether they're going to be successful doing that.
Like most other tech companies these days, HP wants to take on Apple's iPad. And Greenstein says HP hopes having its own hardware and software will be an advantage.
I'm Sally Herships for Marketplace.
HP bought the PalmOS platform and haven't done a thing with it so far, and I think its the best (efficient and easy to use) mobile OS out there. After owning several HP printers, I've realized that the programming folks at HP like "bloat" (not efficient). They need to get some top notch coders (programmers) before they can capitalize on the assets they have already, much less focus on software development.
