In some less delightful news, HP just announced today a 31% drop in profit in Q2 to $1.6 billion, with a revenue of $30.7 billion which is down 3% year over year. Most of this is caused by performance of HP’s enterprise, services and printer groups (so do they still want to make that new unannounced Envy printer or are they hoping it will help boost profits?).
In a worrying trend that’s been around since the days of Mark Hurd (which was 2 CEO’s ago), HP also announced plans to cut 27,000 jobs by the end of fiscal 2014 (which is a whopping 8% of the total of HP’s 330,000 employees worldwide) along with options for ‘early retirement’. By doing this, HP expects to save $3 – $3.5 billion per year.
HP isn’t alone on this as Dell announced a profit drop of 33% in Q1, with the effect seen in both home and business divisions. However, no job cuts were announced from Dell’s side.