Sunday, August 8, 2010

Q&A: HP's Parrattino Talks Hardware Refresh, Pricing Pressure

Is the so-called hardware refresh of 2010 real or imaginary? According to HP, it’s very real—and very lucrative for partners.

Last month at D&H Distributing’s Mid-Atlantic Technology Show, CRN Senior Editor Rob Wright sat down with Mike Parrottino, Vice President of HP’s Personal Systems Group, Solutions Partner Organization, to discuss his company’s PC sales for the first half of 2010 as well as HP’s effort to increase channel resources and personnel in the field. The results for the Personal Systems Group have been impressive so far: For HP’s second quarter, ended April 30, unit shipments jumped 20 percent year-over-year while revenue increased 21 percent, led by surprisingly high growth in the desktop category with 25 percent revenue growth.

With third-quarter earnings just around the corner, can HP keep it up? Parrottino outlines why he thinks PSG’s business will continue to grow, despite intense pricing pressure and competition from the likes of Acer. He also discusses tablet PCs, cloud computing and the product category within PSG that’s really turning heads.

There was a lot of talk six months ago about the potential hardware/PC refresh in 2010. How has the Personal Systems Group fared this year so far?

The first and biggest thing is that we are and have been working on growing our product categories, not just within PSG but throughout Hewlett-Packard. We have a great opportunity with our channel partners with workstations, desktops and notebooks, and we’re getting aggressive with our specialty product categories like retail point-of-sale systems and digital signage. It’s really about bringing together the entire technology portfolio for the client solutions set. And I’ll tell you, I think we have the best product lineup we’ve ever had.

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