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Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 at 02:18:19 :
In Reply to: Re: To add to my gripe posted by Bob Stopka in Panama City on Wednesday, April 01, 2009 at 01:53:31 :
The destruction of HP is a subject that's near and dear to me as an electronics engineer. Even though we joked that "HP" stood for "High Priced", everybody knew they made the best test equipment in the world. The stuff was designed by engineers to be used by engineers and it worked very well. Their manuals were excellent as well, second only to the legendary Tektronix manuals. They had been making minicomputers for a while, mostly to control their test equipment, and around about 1985 they decided they needed to start building some microcomputers (what we call PCs now). They also invented a neat printer technology, the ink jet. After a few years, as Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were retiring and losing control of the company, the Wall Street boys decided that there was a lot more profit growth to be had in the fast growing PC market than in the stodgy old test and measurement market.
By then, Bill and Dave didn't control enough stock to control the company, and the big shareholders forced the company to split itself in two. Bill Hewlett actually tried to stop it and was quite bitter about the whole ruination of his company for the rest of his life. When they split it, they hired Carly Fiorino to run the computer company, and just to rub salt in the wound, they gave her the "HP" name and forced the test and measurement division to find a new name. For lack of anything better, they picked "Agilent", and continued making top-quality test equipment.
Meanwhile, Carly Fiorino was lauded all over the business press for what a great job she was doing making HP into a fast-growing high-profit company. All they really had to trade on, in my opinion, was the HP name and the ink-jet patents. Beyond that, they were in a commodity business and their products were no better than anybody else's. Now the bloom is off the rose, and Ms Fiorino is no longer "girl wonder", but the damage has been done.
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