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HP grabs at commercial PC market in Lenovo dogfight

Hewlett-Packard's plan to bolster its personal systems business is to gain share in the enterprise market -- a segment that's strong for Lenovo.

Larry Dignan
2 min read

Hewlett-Packard is in a market share dogfight with Lenovo and has outlined plans to go after the Chinese PC vendor's strength: The commercial market.

Stats from Gartner and IDC show Lenovo and HP nearly tied for a No. 1 spot in the PC market. HP's analyst meeting and outlook coincided with the market share standings.

Gartner

In a presentation, Dion Weisler, head of HP's PC and printer division, outlined the plan:

  • Grab commercial desktop market share.
  • Grow tablet unit share from 2 percent of the market in the enterprise.
  • Pitch features like self-healing BIOS and hardened operating systems and security.
  • On the commercial side, HP's going to push new form factors.
  • Push "targeted bursts" of tablet launches.
  • Sell computing systems with multiple operating systems such as Windows 8, Android and Google's Chrome OS.

HP executives said that the consumer PC business is important to the company because of bring-your-own-device (BYOD). Nevertheless, HP CEO Meg Whitman told financial analysts that the company has been late in many markets and hasn't navigated the post-PC era well. "PCs are declining while tablets are growing," said Whitman, noting that trend will continue.

Like the company overall, HP is looking to segment the market to target hot areas and maybe pull back in other areas. Whitman said the company needs to be disciplined about how it segments the market and avoid other areas that don't make sense.

HP's plan to put a commercial slant on its PC business isn't too surprising. Check out what HP considers its growth areas and you'll notice that PCs are a small slice of the portfolio.

HP

It's also worth noting where HP rates its personal systems business in the overall scheme of the company.

HP

The challenge here is obvious. Twenty eight percent of HP's revenue is tied to the personal systems and printing division. The company is going to have to be a tablet player to realistically compete. The commercial market is an opportunity for HP's PC business, but enterprises are increasingly eyeing tablets too.

This story originally appeared as "HP targets commercial PC growth in Lenovo dogfight" on ZDNet.