Meg Whitman's Audacious HP Revival Plans

Meg Whitman’s plans to revive Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) have become audacious. Various media report that she believes a more attractively designed family of PCs will bring back customers who have deserted to the Mac or to portable wireless devices. HP’s new line would get individual consumers and businesses to come back to laptops and desktops. Or, perhaps she believes HP can take significant share from Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Lenovo and Acer.

In an interview with Fox Business, Whitman also said HP will reenter the smartphone business. For some reason, she thinks that HP can best products from Apple, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and a cast of smaller smartphone companies, which usually have products that run on Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android OS. HP would have to rely on its widely known brand name to pull off a successful launch. But that brand has been badly tarnished.

Douglas A. McIntyre