If you missed the brief but acerbic war of words between Hewlett-Packard and Michael Dell over the past few days, you're excused.
After all, there was enough news already: Google's proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility; HP's decision to possibly spin off its PC group, and pull out of WebOS hardware; and, finally, the TouchPad fire sale that went on over the weekend. Oh, and the supposed lull before things really heat up during the third and fourth quarters.
But, suddenly, fellow Texan and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban apparently hijacked Michael Dell's Twitter account and started popping off about HP's decision to exit the PC business.
Dell's bon mots:
"If HP spins off their PC business....maybe they will call it Compaq?"
"HP.... They are calling it a separation but it feels like a divorce"
"Goodbye HP, Sorry you don't want to be in PCs anymore..But we do more than ever. How would you say goodbye to HP?"
Don't get me wrong. I like trash talking. It sells ads. It takes players out of the game. I played baseball through college, and did very well as the typical lefty pitcher who relies on junk, control, and smarts to get outs. There was nothing quite like pulling the string in a tough situation, making eye contact, and grinning. Frustration can be a powerful demotivating force.
But the sports arena isn't the PC market. LeBron James may be the best player in the league today, but Dirk Nowitski has a ring on his finger.
Michael, you're still number two in the PC market, both worldwide and in the United States. Remember that. HP may have celebrated passing Dell in April 2009, crowning itself the U.S. PC leader as well as the number-one vendor worldwide, a position it had held since 2006. But it certainly wasn't as public.
HP, You're Not Helping
"Not so fast @MichaelDell," HP tweeted in response. "We are still the #1 PC manufacturer in the world. Our team remains 100% committed"
Well said. But HP then linked to a blog post where HP social media strategist Mark Budgell chipped in with a post titled "A Toast to Opportunity." "Our competitors might say to send us flowers. I say bring on the champagne," he wrote. "I am proud of our successes to date, and bullish about the future. In the meantime, it's all systems go for us."
Oh, dear god. I understand that Hewlett-Packard is essentially considering ditching a low-margin business (PCs) for a high-margin one (enterprise services) but you can't celebrate the end of a market-leading PC business at the same time mumbling that you still might keep it.
HP's PR team, meanwhile, is anything but "all systems go." HP has botched two earnings releases in a row; in May, the company was forced to release its results early after a memo from CEO Leo Apotheker was leaked. This time around, HP's PSG news also found its way into the papers early.
HP, a once great company, has had its image rent into shreds in a year's time. A year ago, Mark Hurd resigned, replaced with Apotheker, a software guy that PCMag mobile analyst Sascha Segan never trusted. In April 2010, HP said that it was doubling down on WebOS, before killing off the hardware little more than a year later. Books will be written about this; business courses will use this as a case study. Annus horribilis, indeed.
Who Will Fill the HP Niche?
Meanwhile, Michael Dell has just put himself on the firing line. It's almost certain that HP's boneheaded PSG move will cost it market share. Dell, like other PC OEMs, is preparing cloud services to help take on Apple's iCloud and create an ecosystem. None had the potential for synergy like HP, though, which had set itself up to tie PCs, tablets, phones and printers together through the magic of WebOS, plus the cloud.
You'd better gain market share, Michael. You should be embarrassed if you don't.
In the meantime, Apple continues to climb. They're now the third-largest U.S. PC vendor, by the way. Acer stumbled; Apple passed them. Dell killed the Streak 5, while Apple continues to sell billions of iPhones and iPod touches. Apple's a safe bet. And it's a rare day when Steve Jobs or Tim Cook issues a statement as public as this one from Dell:
"@HP PC business 100% committed to ownership change to new unknown owner(s) w/unknown strategy, on an unknown time frame," he tweeted on Saturday.
Let's be honest here. Last week was an embarrassment for anyone who enjoys calling themselves a technologist. Google bought a struggling handset maker as a patent defense, and forced its partners to robotically parrot two common words in supporting it: "defending Android." Hewlett-Packard's management has taken a reputation for quality hardware, painstakingly built over decades, and tossed it away in an attempt to ape its chief rival. Business won last week. Technology lost.
Walk the walk, Michael and Leo. You don't build great products on words. You build them on great technology, designed by great people.
Source:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391523,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05039TX1K0000760
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