Demand for hardware pushes HP revenue up 8%
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Notebook and server sales bounce back for Hewlett-Packard, but services division is still in slight decline
Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest IT company, grew revenues by 8% to $31.2 billion in its most recent financial quarter, thanks to a return to form by its personal computer and server divisions.
The Personal Systems Group, which sells PCs, laptops and notebooks, saw revenue grow 20% to $10.6 billion, driven by a 26% increase in unit shipments. Notebook revenue was up 25% for the quarter, counterbalancing a 16% decline in desktop PC sales. As that suggests, consumer sales grew faster than sales to businesses.
“The US PC market grew more than 20% in the recent quarter and we gained roughly 4 points of share in this market,” CEO Mark Hurd claimed on a conference call for investment analysts.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise Storage and Servers line saw an 11% increase in revenue to $6.2 billion. This was the result of a 27% increase in server revenue, offset by a 3% drop in storage sales and a 22% drop for ‘Business Critical Systems’, HP’s high performance computing division. The Imaging and Printing division grew revenues 4% to $6.2 billion.
The services division, which throughout the past year’s difficulties served as something of a revenue crutch for HP, saw sales decline by 1% in the latest quarter. The company revealed that application services, technology services and business process outsourcing all declined, while IT outsourcing in fact grew revenues by 1%.
Hurd said that he wants to increase the company’s salesforce to better address the enterprise market. “Even though HP’s sales force is roughly 50% larger than when I joined the company, we want to increase that number,” he said.
The company is the latest to lament the slow pace of recovery in Europe. “We saw a mixed story in Europe,” said Hurd. Some European countries “showed some rebound” but others “look stagnant to us”, he said.
