HP Discover, Las Vegas – With battle lines in the PC space being drawn between Far Eastern manufacturers such as Lenovo, Acer and Samsung, and more traditional US vendors such as HP and Dell, HP says it has no intention of quietly relinquishing its position as the number one PC company in the world.
Bill Veghte, executive VP and chief operations officer of HP, says that the company has successfully competed against rivals in various markets for decades and will continue to do so in the future.
“There’s no question that the PC market is going through significant evolution,” Veghte says. “But we see any number of areas where we can successfully compete.
“The core hypothesis to date is that you have to make a decision between consumer and enterprise,” he says. “But HP is one of the only manufacturers that has both brand level and enterprise level offerings. We have quality consumer products without compromising on our ability to deliver.
“I think that in the future the end user will have a wide range of choices,” he adds. “But I think that the hybrid – or the 2 in 1, as I prefer to call it – is very compelling. One device that can be either a tablet or a PC.
“We’ve just entered the tablet market and the Slate 7 results so far have been fantastic,” he says.
Veghte points to the success that HP has always had in the printer arena as an indicator of how the company can compete in very competitive markets.
“We’ve been successful in printing since I was trying to get a date in high school,” he quips. “It all goes back to the value proposition and we compete very successfully against Asian vendors in various markets – from printing through to networking.
“We’ve got the brand, and we’ve got the best channel in the market place,” he adds. “In the PC market we are still number one and we have been competitors with Asian companies for a very long time.
“The [PC] market will continue to evolve and we’ve got to pick our segments, our geographies, our price points and our form factors,” Veghte says. “And we’ve got something to beat in those areas.”