Outside Innovation

HP’s Fatal(?) Gaffe

Last week HP announced that it is spinning off its PC business, along with its mobile device business.

The first is too bad. HP offered a good alternative to Dell, Lenovo, Sharp, and, yes, even Apple computers. The second is the result of a strategy that was too little, too late.

I believe this shift may prove fatal to HP for two reasons:

1. If you don’t provide handheld devices and PCs, why would I buy your printers (and your ink)?

2. Why walk away from the only markets that aren’t shrinking? The small and medium business market?

IT Musical Chairs

High tech musical chairs seem more and more irrelevant to me. So Intel is buying McAfee in order to provide firmware security between our mobile devices and the data that sits in the data centers within the clouds we access using our mobile devices. Intel is aligning with both Nokia and Google Android to gain a foothold in the smartphone market. HP and Dell are squabbling over who will pay more for 3Par (a data storage company), while both firms teeter on the brink of irrelevancy. (Google doesn't buy servers from Dell or HP, they build their own.) Nobody really cares what Microsoft does anymore. But every time Google or Apple sneezes, we all notice. In the information technology field, Google and Apple are now the center of the universe. Everything they do matters. Every other company is either aligned with one or both of them or competing with one or both of them. Those who are aligned (Intel+Google) will benefit, at least temporarily. They may get cannibalized over time. Those who are competing (Microsoft vs. Google, Microsoft vs. Apple, Oracle vs. Google, Adobe vs. Apple, etc.) are doomed. We've seen this cycle before. Once upon a time (maybe before you were born), IBM was the center of the IT universe. Later, it was Microsoft. Then Google. Now Apple. Who’s next?