The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. HP is the largest technology company in the world and operates in nearly every country. HP specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, storage, and networking hardware, software and services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise servers, related storage devices, as well as a diverse range of printers and other imaging products. Other product lines, including electronic test equipment and systems, medical electronic equipment, solid state components and instrumentation for chemical analysis were spun off as Agilent Technologies in 1999.
HP markets its products to households, small to medium size businesses and enterprises both directly, via online distribution, consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors.
HP posted US $91.7 billion in annual revenue in 2006 compared to US$91.4 billion for IBM, making it the world's largest technology vendor in terms of sales. In 2007 the revenue was $104 billion, making HP the first IT company in history to report revenues exceeding $100 billion.
HP is the largest worldwide seller of personal computers, surpassing rival Dell, according to market research firms Gartner and IDC reported in January 2008; the gap between HP and Dell widened substantially at the end of 2007, with HP taking a near 3.9% market share lead. HP is also the 5th largest software company in the world. It is one of the only American PC-focused computer companies publicly traded under the New York Stock Exchange.
1- COMPANY HISTORY
1.1- Founding
William (Bill) Hewlett and David (Dave) Packard both graduated in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1935. The company originated in a garage in nearby Palo Alto during a fellowship they had with a past professor, Frederick Terman at Stanford during the Great Depression. Terman was considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard.
The partnership was formalized in 1939 with an investment of US$538. Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett. Packard won the coin toss but named their electronics manufacturing enterprise the "Hewlett-Packard Company". HP incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957.
Of the many projects they worked on, their very first financially successful product was a precision audio oscillator, the Model HP200A. Their innovation was the use of a small light bulb as a temperature dependent resistor in a critical portion of the circuit. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. The Model 200 series of generators continued until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years. At 33 years, it was perhaps the longest-selling basic electronic design of all time.
One of the company's earliest customers was The Walt Disney Company, which bought eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) for use in certifying the Fantasound surround sound systems installed in theaters for the movie Fantasia.
1.2- Early years
The company was originally rather unfocused, working on a wide range of electronic products for industry and even agriculture. Eventually they elected to focus on high-quality electronic test and measurement equipment.
From the 1940s until well into the 1990s the company concentrated on making electronic test equipment – signal generators, voltmeters, oscilloscopes, frequency counters, thermometers, time standards, wave analyzers, and many other instruments. A distinguishing feature was pushing the limits of measurement range and accuracy; many HP instruments were more sensitive, accurate, and precise than other comparable equipment.
Following the pattern set by the company's first product, the 200A, test instruments were labelled with three to five digits followed by the letter "A". Improved versions went to suffixes "B" through "E". As the product range grew wider HP started using product designators starting with a letter for accessories, supplies, software, and components.
1.3- The 1960s
HP is recognized as the symbolic founder of Silicon Valley, although it did not actively investigate semiconductor devices until a few years after the "Traitorous Eight" had abandoned William Shockley to create Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. Hewlett-Packard's HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use. Instruments and calculators were some of the products using these devices.
HP partnered in the 1960s with Sony and the Yokogawa Electric companies in Japan to develop several high-quality products. The products were not a huge success, as there were high costs in building HP-looking products in Japan. HP and Yokogawa formed a joint venture (Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard) in 1963 to market HP products in Japan. HP bought Yokogawa Electric's share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999.
HP spun off a small company, Dynec, to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo "hp" could be turned upside down to be the logo "dy" of the new company. Eventually Dynec changed to Dymec, then was folded back into HP. HP experimented with using Digital Equipment Corporation minicomputers with its instruments. But after deciding that it would be easier to buy another small design team than deal with DEC, HP entered the computer market in 1966 with the HP 2100 / HP 1000 series of minicomputers. These had a simple accumulator-based design, with registers arranged somewhat similarly to the Intel x86 architecture still used today. The series was produced for 20 years, in spite of several attempts to replace it, and was a forerunner of the HP 9800 and HP 250 series of desktop and business computers.
1.4- The 1970s
The HP 3000 was an advanced stack-based design for a business computing server, later redesigned with RISC technology, that has only recently been retired from the market. The HP 2640 series of smart and intelligent terminals introduced forms-based interfaces to ASCII terminals, and also introduced screen labeled function keys, now commonly used on gas pumps and bank ATMs. Although scoffed at in the formative days of computing, HP would eventually surpass even IBM as the world's largest technology vendor in sales.
HP is identified by Wired magazine as the producer of the world's first marketed, mass-produced personal computer, the Hewlett-Packard 9100A, introduced in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared." An engineering triumph at the time, the logic circuit was produced without any integrated circuits; the assembly of the CPU having been entirely executed in discrete components. With CRT display, magnetic-card storage, and printer, the price was around $5000. The machine's keyboard was a cross between that of a scientific calculator and an adding machine. There was no alphabetical keyboard.
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, originally designed the Apple I computer while working at HP and offered it to them under their right of first refusal to his work, but they did not take it up as the company wanted to stay in scientific, business, and industrial markets.
The company earned global respect for a variety of products. They introduced the world's first handheld scientific electronic calculator in 1972 (the HP-35), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the HP-65), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the HP-41C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator, the HP-28C. Like their scientific and business calculators, their oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and other measurement instruments have a reputation for sturdiness and usability (the latter products are now part of spin-off Agilent's product line). The company's design philosophy in this period was summarized as "design for the guy at the next bench".
The 98x5 series of technical desktop computers started in 1975 with the 9815, and the cheaper 80 series, again of technical computers, started in 1979 with the 85. These machines used a version of the BASIC programming language which was available immediately after they were switched on, and used a proprietary magnetic tape for storage. HP computers were similar in capabilities to the much later IBM Personal Computer, although the limitations of available technology forced prices to be high.
1.5- The 1980s
In 1984, HP introduced both inkjet and laser printers for the desktop. Along with its scanner product line, these have later been developed into successful multifunction products, the most significant being single-unit printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. The print mechanisms in HP's tremendously popular LaserJet line of laser printers depend almost entirely on Canon's components (print engines), which in turn use technology developed by Xerox. HP develops the hardware, firmware, and software that convert data into dots for the mechanism to print.
In 1987, the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett and Packard started their business was designated as a California State historical landmark.
1.6- The 1990s
In the 1990s, HP expanded their computer product line, which initially had been targeted at university, research, and business customers, to reach consumers.
HP also grew through acquisitions, buying Apollo Computer in 1989 and Convex Computer in 1995.
Later in the decade HP opened hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell online, direct to consumers; in 2005 the store was renamed "HP Home & Home Office Store."
In 1999, all of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP to form Agilent. Agilent's spin-off was the largest initial public offering in the history of Silicon Valley. The spin-off created an $8 billion company with about 30,000 employees, manufacturing scientific instruments, semiconductors, optical networking devices, and electronic test equipment for telecom and wireless R&D and production.
In July 1999, HP appointed Carly Fiorina as CEO, the first female CEO of a company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Fiorina served as CEO during the tech downtown of the turn of the 2nd millenium. During her tenure, the market halved HP’s value commensurate with other tech companies at the time and the company incurred heavy job losses. The HP Board of Directors asked Fiorina to step down in 2005, and she resigned on February 9, 2005.
1.7- 2000 and beyond
Compaq merger. HP merged with Compaq in 2002. Compaq itself had bought Tandem Computers in 1997 (which had been started by ex-HP employees), and Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998. Following this strategy HP became a major player in desktops, laptops, and servers for many different markets. After the merger with Compaq, the new ticker symbol became "HPQ", a combination of the two previous symbols, "HWP" and "CPQ", to show the significance of the alliance. In 2006 hp outsourced its enterprise support to countries with lower cost workers: the Spanish support (for Spain) moved to Slovakia, the German support moved to Bulgaria, English support moved to Costa Rica, and so on.
EDS purchase. On May 13, 2008, HP and Electronic Data Systems announced [13] that they had signed a definitive agreement under which HP would purchase EDS. On June 30, HP announced that the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 had expired. "The transaction still requires EDS stockholder approval and regulatory clearance from the European Commission and other non-U.S. jurisdictions and is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the other closing conditions specified in the merger agreement." The agreement was finalized on August 26, 2008 and it was publicly announced that EDS would be re-branded "EDS an HP company."
HP also expanded its presence in Israel first with the acqusistion in 2002 of Indigo Digital Press and in November 2005 with the acquisition of Scitex Vision from Scitex Corporation Ltd..
In October 2008, Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co. was named one of "Canada's Top 100 Employers" by Mediacorp Canada Inc., and was featured in Maclean's newsmagazine. Later that month, Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co. was also named one of Greater Toronto's Top Employers, which was announced by the Toronto Star newspaper.
2- TECHNOLOGY & PRODUCTS
HP has successful lines of printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, PDAs, servers, workstation computers, and computers for home and small business use computers; many of the computers came from the 2002 merger with Compaq. HP today promotes itself as supplying not just hardware and software, but also a full range of services to design, implement and support IT infrastructure.
The three business segments: Enterprise Storage and Servers (ESS), HP Services (HPS), and HP Software are structured beneath the broader Technology Solutions Group (TSG).
2.1- Imaging and Printing Group (IPG)
According to HP's 2005 U.S. SEC 10-K filing, HP's Imaging and Printing Group is "the leading imaging and printing systems provider in the world for printer hardware, printing supplies and scanning devices, providing solutions across customer segments from individual consumers to small and medium businesses to large enterprises." This division is currently headed by Vyomesh Joshi.
Products and technology associated with the Imaging and Printing Group include:
Inkjet and LaserJet printers, consumables and related products
Officejet all-in-one multifunction printer/scanner/faxes
Large Format Printers
Indigo Digital Press
HP Web Jetadmin printer management software
HP Output Management suite of software, including HP Output Server
LightScribe optical recording technology that laser-etches labels on disks
HP Photosmart digital cameras and photo printers
HP SPaM Hosted within IPG, SPaM is an internal consulting group that supports all HP businesses on mission-critical strategic and operation decisions.
On December 23, 2008, HP releases iPrint Photo for iPhone a free downloadable
software application that allows to print 4" x 6" photo.
2.2- Personal Systems Group (PSG)
HP's Personal Systems Group claims to be "one of the leading vendors of personal computers ("PCs") in the world based on unit volume shipped and annual revenue."[16]
Personal Systems Group products/technology include:
Business PCs and accessories
Consumer PCs and accessories including the HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario and VoodooPC series
Workstations for Unix, Windows and Linux systems
Handheld Computing including iPAQ Pocket PC handheld computing devices (from Compaq)
Digital "Connected" Entertainment including HP MediaSmart TVs, HP MediaSmart
Servers, HP MediaVaults, and DVD+RW drives. HP resold the Apple iPod until November 2005.
Home Storage Servers
2.3- Technology Solutions Group (TSG)
TSG incorporates Technical services, EDS, HP Software, Enterprise Storage and Servers Group (ESS) and ProCurve Networking.
2.4- Office of Strategy and Technology
HP's Office of Strategy and Technology, under Executive Vice President Shane Robison:
Steers the company's $3.6 billion research and development investment — including HP Labs.
Fosters the development of the company's global technical community.
Leads the company's strategy and corporate development efforts — including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, intellectual property licensing, venture capital partnerships, and the ProCurve Networking Business Unit.
Performs worldwide corporate marketing activities — including external and internal communications, brand marketing, customer intelligence, and corporate affairs.
3- ENVIRONMENTAL RECORD
In 1998, the United States Environmental Protection Agency sought a $2.5 million penalty against Hewlett Packard for violations against the Substance Control Act. The PA EPA alleged that the company had not filed a Pre-Manufacturing Notice (PMN) before it began manufacturing and exporting chemicals. Without filing these PMNs, the EPA cannot conduct risk analysis of new chemicals.
In 2002, Scorecard.org ranked Hewlett Packard facilities in the top 10-20 percentile for total environmental releases and top 30-40 percentile for air releases of recognized developmental toxicants. It also showed that HPs factory in Puerto Rico released 246 lb (112 kg) of air released TRI pollutants, and had a total of 483,136 lb (219,147 kg) of production related wastes.
In July 2007, the company announced that it had met its target, set in 2004, to recycle 1 billion pounds of electronics and toner and ink cartridges. It has set a new goal of recycling a further 2 billion pounds of hardware by the end of 2010. In 2006, the company recovered 187 million pounds of electronics, 73 percent more than its closest competitor.
4- HP CERTIFIED PROFESSIONALS
Hewlett-Packard's Certified Professional (HP-CP) program was developed to confirm the technical skills, sales competencies and knowledge that is required to propose and deploy, service and support technology and solutions sold by HP. HP-CP is intended for customers, resellers, and HP employees.
5- SPONSORSHIPS
HP has many sponsorships. One well known sponsorship is of Walt Disney World's Epcot Park's Mission: SPACE. Others can be found on Hewlett-Packard's website . From 1995 to 1999 they were the shirt sponsor of English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur. They also sponsored the BMW Williams Formula 1 team. Hewlett-Packard also has the naming rights arrangement for the HP Pavilion at San Jose, home of the San Jose Sharks NHL hockey team.
6- PRODUCT LEGACY
Agilent Technologies, not HP, retains the direct product legacy of the original company founded in 1939. Agilent's current portfolio of electronic instruments are descended from HP's very earliest products. HP entered the computer business only after its instrumentation competencies were well-established.
After the acquisition of Compaq in 2002, HP has maintained the "Compaq Presario" brand on low-end home desktops and laptops, the "HP Compaq" brand on business desktops and laptops, and the "HP ProLiant" brand on Intel-architecture servers. (The "HP Pavilion" brand is used on home entertainment laptops and all home desktops.)
HP uses DEC's "StorageWorks" brand on storage systems; Tandem's "NonStop" servers are now branded as "HP Integrity NonStop".
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