Who would buy HP’s Consumer PC division?
First of all I must preference this in that I have no sort of inside knowledge to HP’s hardware division and my day to day activities have zero relationship to anyone in that division but I am intrigued by this and would like to theorize.
So today’s announcement has made it abundantly clear that HP is looking to sell off it’s hardware division. And it’s no real secret that PC margins in today’s industry are so close to zero it’s ridiculous. So obviously the bigger players, Acer, Dell, Lenovo could in theory double up their business and quickly take over the number one slot in PC volume, if they could offer up enough cash. But really with the PC market in decline, and margins so low the bigger players probably aren’t interested unless they get it for a fire sale price. Maybe some investment firm with too much money could buy it sure, you know that scheme worked wonders for Chrysler.
What I suggest is Apple buy it. Apple certainly has the cash laying around to make a decent offer. They would instantly take down a huge competitor, pick up their manufacturing. Probably triple their manufacturing capabilities as well as pickup their vendor agreements to buy hardware at a nice price. This would lower manufacturing costs of their hardware, and maybe just maybe they would lower the cost of their machines to consumers. With Apple’s marketshare rising on all fronts (except for maybe AppleTV), Apple could use increased manufacturing capacity.
This would distract the PC manufacturers as they would be jumping over each other trying to suck up as much of HP’s former PC market as they could. They would be looking for new ways to beat each other, and not Apple. And if by chance Apple is having some heartburn over buying so much manufacturing capabilities they could very well sell some of it the other PC manufacturers who are trying to ramp up.
The only question is would HP sell to Apple? It of course would be the ultimate irony considering Apple’s history, where Steve Wozniak left HP to go start Apple. But in tech there seems to be this full circle that happens more often than we care to admit.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2011 at 9:21 pm and is filed under biz, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.