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HP readies Windows 8 'X86' products for holiday, says CEO

CEO Meg Whitman says during an earnings conference call that Hewlett-Packard has a line of products ready for the next iteration of Windows.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
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Hewlett-Packard has a line of products ready to go for Windows 8, CEO Meg Whitman said today during the company's earnings conference call.

"We have a product line lined up in PSG (Personal Systems Group) on Windows on X86. We believe we're going to be well-positioned for holiday on Windows 8 X86," she said. X86 refers to the chip design that Intel and Advanced Micro Devices use.

Whitman made no mention of ARM, the other chip technology that Windows 8 will run on.

"The better Windows 8 is, the better off we are," she said. "So, we're rooting for a fantastic Windows 8 product that's delivered on time that we can get to market before the holiday season."

Whitman and Chief Financial Officer Catherine Lesjak also talked a lot about the hard disk drive shortage.

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"The hard disk drive shortage had a significant impact on our revenue in Q1. And the industry supply of hard drives was about 30 percent below expected demand. So, this had an impact on everyone," said Whitman.

Lesjak mentioned that HP was forced to ship servers that were "less richly configured" because HP didn't have enough of certain drives.

But the shortage is expected to ease. "In Q2 there will be an impact to revenue due to the hard disk drive shortage although we expect the impact to be smaller in Q2 than Q1 based on the drives to which we have line of sight," said Lesjak.

Whitman also addressed the HP "turnaround" a number of times. "These things are not quick. It took us awhile to get ourselves into the situation we find ourself in and it's going to take us a little while to get out. And if you look at history, these turnarounds are not done in less than two years. And often they take three, four, or five years."

The company reported first-quarter earnings of $1.5 billion, or 73 cents a share, on revenue of $30 billion, down 7 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 92 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting HP to report first-quarter earnings of 87 cents a share on revenue of $30.67 billion.