HP combines Printer -PC units, banks on Joshi for growth

By siliconindia staff writer   |   Monday, 17 January 2005, 20:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
PALO ALTO/ NEW DELHI: Hewlett Packard has announced the merger of its Imaging and Printing Group and Personal Systems Group, forming the HP Imaging and Personal Systems Group. The company’s IPG executive vice president Vyomesh Joshi will lead the new group. Joshi has been executive vice president of the imaging and printing unit for the past three years and has worked at HP for 24 years. Combining the groups would bring greater efficiency and help the company introduce products more quickly. The company however did not immediately offer details on merger costs, potential cost savings or staffing. It will continue to report financials for the two groups separately. The two groups have been working together on projects like HP's consumer electronics products like PCs designed for the living room, televisions, digital cameras, printers and music players, including HP's version of the Apple Computer iPod. With IBM selling its PC business to Chinese PC maker Lenovo, it is time for many a global re-arrangement in the PC business sector. For HP, combining the PC and printer businesses is likely to yield considerable cost savings from shared overhead as well as offer PCs and printers. In recent years, the board of directors on three occasions had also looked into splitting up the company, HP CEO Carly Fiorina said in early December. The measure, which would have amounted to spinning off the PC business, was defeated each time, as the board stuck with the belief that HP's business benefits from a tight bundling of products, she said. A memo was circulated among the staff as the news of merger was released. The memo read "Under Joshi’s leadership, this new organisation will drive profitable growth, leverage the power of the combined portfolio and strengthen and unify our capabilities to beat our competition." The move has been necessitated by the need for better profitable conditions for its personal computer unit and the patchy results during the past few quarters. With the profit margins in the PC business coming down to less than one percent of sales, Joshi has at hand a tough task to steer growth. Joshi has been the driving force behind HP's accelerated earnings at the company's printer unit in the past three years. Joshi is likely to continue operating from his existing base in the US. Joshi, a native of Ahmedabad, has been on the upswing at HP since the late 1990s. It may be recalled that Joshi last visited India in the month of December 2002 and had held talks with major customers and the channel community as well. "Vyomesh Joshi is one of the most highly regarded managers that I have come across with. He is a visionary and an outstanding professional. His clear understanding of complex things has taken him up to this position and we are proud of him. I am sure that under his leadership, our PC business will touch greater heights," informed a senior HP India official on conditions of anonymity. In May 2002, siliconindia had featured Vyomesh Joshi.For full interview log onto https://www.siliconindia.com/Magazine/fullstory.asp?aid=SVT965854835

siliconindia