The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...
company headquartered in
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was es ...
. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components, as well as software and related services to consumers, small and medium-sized businesses (
SMBs), and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health, and education sectors. The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by
Bill Hewlett
William Redington Hewlett ( ; May 20, 1913 – January 12, 2001) was an American engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP).
Early life and education
Hewlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his ...
and
David Packard
David Packard ( ; September 7, 1912 – March 26, 1996) was an American electrical engineer and co-founder, with Bill Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–64), CEO (1964–68), and chairman of the board (1964–68 ...
in 1939, and initially produced a line of electronic test and measurement equipment. The
HP Garage
The HP Garage is a private museum where the company Hewlett-Packard (HP) was founded. It is located at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, California. It is considered to be the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley". In the 1930s, Stanford University and its ...
at 367 Addison Avenue is now designated an official California Historical Landmark, and is marked with a plaque calling it the "Birthplace of '
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...
'".
The company won its first big contract in 1938 to provide test and measurement instruments for
Walt Disney
Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
's production of the animated film ''
Fantasia'', which allowed Hewlett and Packard to formally establish the Hewlett-Packard Company on July 2, 1939. The company grew into a
multinational corporation
A multinational company (MNC), also referred to as a multinational enterprise (MNE), a transnational enterprise (TNE), a transnational corporation (TNC), an international corporation or a stateless corporation with subtle but contrasting senses, i ...
widely respected for its products. HP was the world's
leading PC manufacturer from 2007 until the second quarter of 2013, when
Lenovo moved ahead of HP.
HP specialized in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware; designing software; and delivering services. Major product lines included personal computing devices, enterprise and industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software, and a range of printers and other imaging products. The company directly marketed its products to households; small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises, as well as via online distribution; consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers; software partners; and major technology vendors. It also offered services and a consulting business for its products and partner products.
In 1999, HP
spun off its electronic and bio-analytical test and measurement instruments business into
Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American life sciences company that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow. Its global headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California. Agilent was establi ...
; HP retained focus on its later products, including computers and printers. It
merged with
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
in 2002, and acquired
Electronic Data Systems in 2008, which led to combined revenues of $118.4 billion that year and a
Fortune 500 ranking of 9 in 2009. In November 2009, HP announced its acquisition of
3Com
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...
,
and closed the deal on April 12, 2010. On April 28, 2010, HP announced its buyout of
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 6 ...
for $1.2 billion. On September 2, 2010, HP won its
bidding war
A bid price is the highest price that a buyer (i.e., bidder) is willing to pay for some goods. It is usually referred to simply as the "bid". In bid and ask, the bid price stands in contrast to the ask price or "offer", and the difference between ...
for
3PAR with a $33 a share offer ($2.07 billion), which
Dell declined to match.
On November 1, 2015, the company spun off its enterprise products and services business
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas, United States.
HPE was founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, as part of the splitting of the ...
. HP retained the personal computer and printer businesses and was renamed
HP Inc.
HP Inc. is an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, that develops personal computers (PCs), printers and related supplies, as well as 3D printing solutions.
It was formed on Novembe ...
History
Bill Hewlett
William Redington Hewlett ( ; May 20, 1913 – January 12, 2001) was an American engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP).
Early life and education
Hewlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his ...
and
David Packard
David Packard ( ; September 7, 1912 – March 26, 1996) was an American electrical engineer and co-founder, with Bill Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–64), CEO (1964–68), and chairman of the board (1964–68 ...
graduated with degrees in
electrical engineering from
Stanford University in 1935. The company started in a
garage
A garage is a covered structure built for the purpose of parking, storing, protecting, maintaining, and/or repairing vehicles. Specific applications include:
*Garage (residential), a building or part of a building for storing one or more vehicle ...
in
Palo Alto
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was es ...
during a fellowship they had with past professor
Frederick Terman
Frederick Emmons Terman (; June 7, 1900 – December 19, 1982) was an American professor and academic administrator. He was the dean of the school of engineering from 1944 to 1958 and provost from 1955 to 1965 at Stanford University. He is wid ...
at Stanford during the
Great Depression, whom they considered a mentor in forming the company.
In 1938, Packard and Hewlett began part-time work in a rented garage with an initial capital investment of . In 1939, Hewlett and Packard decided to formalize their partnership. They tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard (HP) or Packard-Hewlett. HP was incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957.
Hewlett and Packard's first financially successful product was a precision audio
oscillator known as the
HP 200A
The HP 200A was the first product made by Hewlett-Packard and was manufactured in David Packard's garage in Palo Alto, California.
It was a low-distortion audio oscillator used for testing sound equipment. It used the Wien bridge oscillator ci ...
, which used a small incandescent
light bulb (known as a "pilot light") as a temperature dependent
resistor in a critical portion of the circuit, and a negative feedback loop to stabilize the amplitude of the output sinusoidal waveform. This allowed the HP 200A to be sold for when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over . The 200 series of generators continued production until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years.
One of the company's earliest customers was Bud Hawkins, chief
sound engineer
An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproductio ...
for
Walt Disney Studios, who bought eight HP 200B audio oscillators (at each) to be used in the animated film ''
Fantasia''. HP's profit at the end of 1939, its first full year of business, was on revenues of .
In 1942, they built their first building at 395 Page Mill Road and were awarded the
Army-Navy "E" Award
The Army-Navy "E" Award was an honor presented to companies during World War II whose production facilities achieved "Excellence in Production" ("E") of war equipment. The award was also known as the Army-Navy Production Award. The award was cr ...
in 1943. HP employed 200 people and produced the audio oscillator, a wave analyzer, distortion analyzers, an audio-signal generator, and the Model 400A
vacuum-tube voltmeter during the war.
Hewlett and Packard worked on counter-radar technology and artillery shell
proximity fuzes during World War II; the work exempted Packard from the draft, but Hewlett had to serve as an officer in the
Army Signal Corps
The United States Army Signal Corps (USASC) is a branch of the United States Army that creates and manages communications and information systems for the command and control of combined arms forces. It was established in 1860, the brainchild of Ma ...
after being called to active duty.
In 1947, the company was incorporated with Packard as president. He handed the presidency over to Hewlett when he became chairman in 1964, but remained CEO of the company.
Sales reached in 1951 with 215 employees. In 1959, a manufacturing plant was established in
Böblingen and a marketing organization in
Geneva
, neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier
, website = https://www.geneve.ch/
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
.
1960s
![Hp200a-front-panel](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Hp200a-front-panel.JPG)
HP is recognized as the symbolic founder of
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...
, though it did not actively investigate
semiconductor devices
A semiconductor device is an electronic component that relies on the electronic properties of a semiconductor material (primarily silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors) for its function. Its conductivity l ...
until a few years after the "
traitorous eight" abandoned
William Shockley
William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointl ...
to create
Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. Hewlett-Packard's HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use. HP Associates was co-founded by another former
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...
researcher,
MOSFET inventor
Mohamed Atalla,
who served as Director of Semiconductor Research.
Instruments and
calculators were some of the products using semiconductor devices from HP Associates.
During the 1960s, HP partnered with
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...
and
Yokogawa Electric
is a Japanese multinational electrical engineering and software company, with businesses based on its measurement, control, and information technologies.
It has a global workforce of over 19,000 employees, 84 subsidiary and 3 affiliated compa ...
in Japan to develop several high-quality products. The products were not a huge success, as there were high costs involved in building HP-looking products in Japan. In 1963, HP and Yokogawa formed the joint venture Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard to market HP products in Japan. HP bought Yokogawa Electric's share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999.
HP spun off the small company Dynac to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo could be turned upside down to be a reflected image of the logo of the new company. Dynac was eventually renamed Dymec and folded back into HP in 1959. HP experimented with using
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
(DEC) minicomputers with its instruments, but entered the computer market in 1966 with the
HP 2100
The HP 2100 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers that were produced by Hewlett-Packard (HP) from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. Tens of thousands of machines in the series were sold over its twenty-five year lifetime, making HP the fourth largest mi ...
/
HP 1000
HP may refer to:
Businesses and organisations
* HP Inc., an American technology company
** Hewlett-Packard, the predecessor to HP Inc.
* HP Foods
** HP Sauce, formerly made by HP Foods
* Handley Page, an aircraft company
* Hindustan Petroleum
...
series of minicomputers after it decided that it would be easier to build another small design team than deal with DEC. The minicomputers had a simple
accumulator-based design with two accumulator registers and, in the HP 1000 models, two
index register
An index register in a computer's CPU is a processor register (or an assigned memory location) used for pointing to operand addresses during the run of a program. It is useful for stepping through strings and arrays. It can also be used for hol ...
s. 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
The HP 250 was a multiuser business computer by Hewlett-Packard running HP 250 BASIC language as its OS with access to HP's IMAGE database management. It was produced by the General Systems Division (GSD), but was a major repackaging of desk ...
series of desktop and business computers.
At the end of 1968, Packard handed over the duties of CEO to Hewlett to become
United States Deputy Secretary of Defense
The deputy secretary of defense (acronym: DepSecDef) is a statutory office () and the second-highest-ranking official in the Department of Defense of the United States of America.
The deputy secretary is the principal civilian deputy to the sec ...
in the incoming Nixon administration. He resumed the chairmanship in 1972 and served until 1993, but Hewlett remained the CEO.
1970s
The
HP 3000
The HP 3000 series is a family of 16-bit and 32-bit minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard. It was designed to be the first minicomputer with full support for time-sharing in the hardware and the operating system, features that had mostly been limite ...
was an advanced stack-based design for a business computing server, later redesigned with
RISC technology. The
HP 2640
The HP 2640A and other HP 264X models were block-mode "smart" and intelligent ASCII standard serial terminals produced by Hewlett-Packard using the Intel 8008 and 8080 microprocessors.
History
The HP 2640A was introduced in November 1974 at a ...
series of smart and intelligent terminals introduced forms-based interfaces to
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
terminals, and also introduced
screen labeled function keys
A soft key is a button flexibly programmable to invoke any of a number of functions rather than being associated with a single fixed function or a fixed set of functions. A softkey often takes the form of a screen-labeled function key located al ...
, now commonly used on gas pumps and bank ATMs. The HP 2640 series included one of the first bit mapped graphics displays that, when combined with the
HP 2100
The HP 2100 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers that were produced by Hewlett-Packard (HP) from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. Tens of thousands of machines in the series were sold over its twenty-five year lifetime, making HP the fourth largest mi ...
21MX F-Series microcoded Scientific Instruction Set, enabled the first commercial
WYSIWYG
In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...
presentation program
A computing, a presentation program (also called presentation software) is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide show. It has three major functions:
* an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted
* a ...
,
BRUNO
Bruno may refer to:
People and fictional characters
*Bruno (name), including lists of people and fictional characters with either the given name or surname
* Bruno, Duke of Saxony (died 880)
* Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne, ...
, that later became the program HP-Draw on the HP 3000. Although scoffed at in the formative days of computing, HP surpassed IBM as the world's largest technology vendor in terms of sales.
![HP0100A 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/HP0100A_1.jpg)
HP was identified by ''
Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
'' magazine as the producer of the world's first device to be called a personal computer: the
Hewlett-Packard 9100A, introduced in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as 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
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
, and the CPU assembly was entirely executed in discrete components. With
CRT display, magnetic-card storage, and printer, the price was around $5,000. The machine's keyboard was a cross between that of a scientific calculator and an adding machine. There was no alphabetic keyboard.
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
co-founder
Steve Wozniak originally designed the
Apple I
The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I or Apple-1, is an 8-bit desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak. The i ...
computer while working at HP and offered it to them under their
right of first refusal
Right of first refusal (ROFR or RFR) is a contractual right that gives its holder the option to enter a business transaction with the owner of something, according to specified terms, before the owner is entitled to enter into that transactio ...
to his work; they did not take it up as the company wanted to stay in scientific, business, and industrial markets. Wozniak said that HP "turned him down five times", but that his loyalty to HP made him hesitant to start Apple with
Steve Jobs.
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 HP-35 was Hewlett-Packard's first pocket calculator and the world's first ''scientific'' pocket calculator: a calculator with trigonometric and exponential functions. It was introduced in 1972.
History
In about 1970 HP co-founder Bill Hewl ...
), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the
HP-65
The HP-65 is the first magnetic card-programmable handheld calculator. Introduced by Hewlett-Packard in 1974 at an MSRP of $795 (), it featured nine storage registers and room for 100 keystroke instructions. It also included a magnetic card re ...
), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the
HP-41
The HP-41C series are programmable, expandable, continuous memory handheld RPN calculators made by Hewlett-Packard from 1979 to 1990. The original model, HP-41C, was the first of its kind to offer alphanumeric display capabilities. Later came ...
C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator, the
HP-28C
The HP-28C and HP-28S were two graphing calculators produced by Hewlett-Packard from 1986 to 1992.
The HP-28C was the first handheld calculator capable of solving equations symbolically.
They were replaced by the HP 48 series of calculato ...
.
Like their scientific and business calculators, HP
oscilloscopes,
logic analyzer
A logic analyzer is an electronic instrument that captures and displays multiple signals from a digital system or digital circuit. A logic analyzer may convert the captured data into timing diagrams, protocol decodes, state machine traces, a ...
s, and other measurement instruments had a reputation for sturdiness and usability. HP introduced the Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (HPIB) computer peripheral interface (later cloned by National Instruments as GPIB and standardized by the
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...
as
IEEE-488
IEEE 488 is a short-range digital communications 8-bit parallel multi-master interface bus specification developed by Hewlett-Packard as HP-IB (Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus). It subsequently became the subject of several standards, and is ...
) on their relay actuator products in 1973, that was later integrated into most high end test & measurement equipment it produced from 1980 onward. As early as 1977 HP began production of the HP856x
spectrum analyzer
A spectrum analyzer measures the magnitude of an input signal versus frequency within the full frequency range of the instrument. The primary use is to measure the power of the spectrum of known and unknown signals. The input signal that most co ...
s to complement its RF power meters and sensors capable of measuring signals in excess of 20 GHz. HP also produced configurable chassis based
sweep generator
A sweep generator is a piece of electronic test equipment similar to, and sometimes included on, a function generator which creates an electrical waveform with a linearly varying frequency and a constant amplitude. Sweep generators are commonly u ...
s capable of generating signals to 20GHz. Other T&M products of the time included lab grade multimeters, microwave frequency counters, RF amplfiers, high accuracy microwave detectors, lab grade power supplies and more. These products were succeeded by modernized versions as well as the introduction of the scalar and
vector network analyzer
A network analyzer is an instrument that measures the network parameters of electrical networks. Today, network analyzers commonly measure s–parameters because reflection and transmission of electrical networks are easy to measure at high ...
product lines prior to the business being spun off into
Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American life sciences company that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow. Its global headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California. Agilent was establi ...
.
The
HP 9800 series
The HP 9800 is a family of what were initially called programmable calculators and later desktop computers that were made by Hewlett-Packard, replacing their first HP 9100 calculator. It is also named "98 line". The 9830 and its successors wer ...
of technical desktop computers started in 1975 with the 9815. The
HP series 80
The Hewlett-Packard series 80 of small scientific desktop computers was introduced in 1980, beginning with the popular HP-85 targeted at engineering and control applications. They provided the capability of the HP 9800 series desktop computers wi ...
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
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...
, though the limitations of available technology forced prices to be high.
In 1978, Hewlett stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by
John A. Young.
1980s
HP expanded into
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
in the 1980s. Activists supporting
divestment from South Africa
Disinvestment (or divestment) from South Africa was first advocated in the 1960s, in protest against South Africa's system of apartheid, but was not implemented on a significant scale until the mid-1980s. The disinvestment campaign, after bein ...
accused HP of "automating
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
".
Sales reached $6.5 billion in 1985 with 85,000 employees.
In 1984, HP introduced both
inkjet
Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpens ...
and
laser printer
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to ...
s for the desktop. Along with its
scanner product line, the printers have later been developed into successful
multifunction
An MFP (multi-function product/printer/peripheral), multi-functional, all-in-one (AIO), or multi-function device (MFD), is an office machine which incorporates the functionality of multiple devices in one, so as to have a smaller footprint in a ...
products, the most significant being single-unit printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. The print mechanisms in HP's
LaserJet
LaserJet as a brand name identifies the line of laser printers marketed by the American computer company Hewlett-Packard (HP). The HP LaserJet was the first popular desktop laser printer. Canon supplies both mechanisms and cartridges for most HP ...
line of laser printers depend almost entirely on
Canon Inc.
is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optical, imaging, and industrial products, such as lenses, cameras, medical equipment, scanners, printers, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.< ...
's components (print engines), which in turn use technology developed by
Xerox
Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...
. HP developed the hardware, firmware, and software to convert data into dots for printing.
On March 3, 1986, HP registered the HP.com domain name, making it the
ninth Internet .com domain to be registered.
In 1987, the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett and Packard started their business was designated as a
California Historical Landmark
A California Historical Landmark (CHL) is a building, structure, site, or place in California that has been determined to have statewide historical landmark significance.
Criteria
Historical significance is determined by meeting at least one of ...
.
1990s
In the 1990s, HP expanded their computer product line, which initially had been targeted at university, research, and business users, to reach consumers. HP also grew through acquisitions: it bought
Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer Inc., founded in 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, by William Poduska (a founder of Prime Computer) and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo ...
in 1989 and
Convex Computer
Convex Computer Corporation was a company that developed, manufactured and marketed vector minisupercomputers and supercomputers for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Their later Exemplar series of parallel computing machines were based on the ...
in 1995.
In 1992, Young was succeeded by
Lewis E. Platt
Lewis Emmett Platt (April 11, 1941 – September 8, 2005) was an American businessman and corporate director, who was chairman, president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard.
Personal life and education
Platt was born in Johnson C ...
, and in 1993 and Hewlett and Packard stepped down from the board with Platt succeeding Packard as chairman.
In 1993, HP acquired
Advanced Design System
Advanced Design System (ADS) is an electronic design automation software system produced by PathWave Design, a division of Keysight Technologies. It provides an integrated design environment to designers of RF electronic products such as mobile ...
from Pathwave. The ADS suite of RF simulation tools was spun off into Agilent in 1999 along with related T&M business units, all of which were carried forward into the spinoff of Agilent into Keysight.
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".
From 1995 to 1998, Hewlett-Packard were sponsors of the English football team
Tottenham Hotspur
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as Tottenham () or Spurs, is a professional football club based in Tottenham, London, England. It competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. The team has playe ...
.
In 1999, all of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP to form
Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American life sciences company that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow. Its global headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California. Agilent was establi ...
. Agilent's spin-off was the largest
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...
in the history of
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...
, and it created an company with about 30,000 employees, manufacturing
scientific instruments
A scientific instrument is a device or tool used for scientific purposes, including the study of both natural phenomena and theoretical research.
History
Historically, the definition of a scientific instrument has varied, based on usage, laws, an ...
,
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
s, optical networking devices, and
electronic test equipment
Electronic test equipment is used to create signals and capture responses from electronic devices under test (DUTs). In this way, the proper operation of the DUT can be proven or faults in the device can be traced. Use of electronic test equipmen ...
for
telecom and wireless,
research and development, and production.
In July 1999, HP appointed
Carly Fiorina
Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (''née'' Sneed; born September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and politician, known primarily for her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP). As chief executive officer of HP from 1999 to 2005, Fiorina was ...
as the first female
CEO of a Fortune-20 company in the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity inde ...
. Fiorina received a larger signing offer than any of her predecessors.
Sales to Iran despite sanctions
In 1997, HP started selling its products in
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
through a European subsidiary and a
Dubai
Dubai (, ; ar, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 emirates of the United Arab Emirates.The Government and Politics of ...
-based Middle Eastern distributor, despite U.S. export sanctions prohibiting such deals imposed by
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
's
1995 executive orders.
The story was initially reported by ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'',
and it triggered an inquiry by the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...
(SEC). HP responded that products worth 120 million were sold in fiscal year 2008 for distribution via Redington Gulf, a company based in the Netherlands, and that as these sales took place through a foreign subsidiary, HP had not violated sanctions.
HP named Redington Gulf "Wholesaler of the Year" in 2003, which in turn published a press release stating that "
e seeds of the Redington-Hewlett-Packard relationship were sowed six years ago for one market — Iran."
At the time, Redington Gulf had only three employees whose sole purpose was to sell HP products to the Iran market.
According to former officials who worked on sanctions, HP used a loophole by routing their sales through a foreign subsidiary.
HP ended its relationship with Redington Gulf after the SEC inquiry.
2000–2005
![Hp Deskjet 3845](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Hp_Deskjet_3845.jpg)
On September 3, 2001, HP announced that an agreement had been reached with
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
to merge the two companies. In May 2002, after passing a shareholder vote, HP officially merged with Compaq. Prior to this, plans had been in place to consolidate the companies' product teams and product lines.
As Compaq took over
Tandem Computers
Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum up ...
in 1997 and
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
in 1998, HP offers support for the former Tandem NonStop family and Digital Equipment products PDP-11, VAX and AlphaServer.
The merger occurred after a proxy fight with Bill Hewlett's son Walter, who objected to the merger. HP became a major producer in
desktop computers, laptops, and servers for many different markets. After the merger with Compaq, the new
ticker symbol
A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. In short, ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters (generally Latin letters ...
became "HPQ", a combination of the two previous symbols, "HWP" and "CPQ", to show the significance of the alliance and also key letters from the two companies Hewlett-Packard and Compaq (the latter company being famous for its "Q" logo on all of its products).
In 2004, HP released the DV 1000 Series, including the
HP Pavilion dv 1658
The HP Pavilion dv1000 series (equivalent to the Compaq Presario ze2000 and V2000 series, and HP Compaq nx4800 series) are "thin and light" 14.1" widescreen laptops manufactured by Quanta and mass-produced under the HP name. There were several d ...
and 1040. In May 2006, HP began its campaign, "The Computer is Personal Again"; the campaign was designed to bring back the personal computer as a personal product. The campaign utilized viral marketing, sophisticated visuals, and its own website. Some of the ads featured
Pharrell
Pharrell Lanscilo Williams (; born April 5, 1973) is an American record producer, rapper, singer, and songwriter. Alongside close colleague Chad Hugo, he formed the hip hop and R&B production duo the Neptunes in the early 1990s, with whom h ...
,
Petra Nemcova
Petra ( ar, ٱلْبَتْرَاء, Al-Batrāʾ; grc, Πέτρα, "Rock", Nabataean: ), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu or Raqēmō, is an historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It is adjacent to the mountain of Jab ...
,
Mark Burnett
Mark Burnett (born 17 July 1960) is a television producer who is the former Chairman of MGM Worldwide Television Group. He is best known for creating and producing the reality shows ''The Apprentice'', '' Survivor'', ''The Voice'', and ''Sh ...
,
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...
,
Alicia Keys
Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), known professionally as Alicia Keys, is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. A classically trained pianist, Keys started composing songs when she was 12 and was signed at 15 years old by Col ...
,
Jay-Z,
Gwen Stefani, and
Shaun White
Shaun Roger White (born September 3, 1986) is an American former professional snowboarder and skateboarder. He is a five-time Olympian and a three-time Olympic gold medalist in half-pipe snowboarding. He holds the world record for the most X G ...
.
In January 2005, following years of underperformance, which included HP's Compaq merger that fell short
and disappointing earning reports, the board asked Fiorina to resign as chair and chief executive officer of the company, and she did on February 9, 2005. After her departure, HP's stock jumped 6.9 percent. Robert Wayman, chief financial officer of HP, served as interim CEO while the board undertook a formal search for a replacement.
Mark Hurd
Mark Vincent Hurd (January 1, 1957 – October 18, 2019) was an American technology executive who served as Co-CEO and as a member of the board of directors of Oracle Corporation. He had previously served as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer ...
of
NCR Corporation was hired to take over as CEO and president, effective April 1, 2005. Hurd was the board's top choice given the revival of NCR that took place under his leadership.
2006–2009
![IPAQ-112](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/IPAQ-112.jpg)
In 2006, HP unveiled several new products including desktops, enhanced notebooks, a workstation, and software to manage them—OpenView Client Configuration Manager 2.0. In the same year, HP's share price skyrocketed due to consistent results in the last couple quarters of the year with Hurd's plan to cut back HP's workforce and lower costs.
In July 2007, HP signed a definitive agreement to acquire
Opsware
Opsware, Inc. was a software company based in Sunnyvale, California, that offered products for server and network device provisioning, configuration, and management targeted toward enterprise customers. Opsware had offices in New York City, Redm ...
in a cash tender deal that values the company at per share, which combined Opsware software with the
Oracle enterprise IT management software.
In the first few years of Hurd's tenure as CEO, HP's stock price more than doubled. By the end of the 2007 fiscal year, HP reached the mark for the first time. The company's annual revenue reached , allowing HP to overtake competitor IBM.
On May 13, 2008, HP and
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) announced 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, at $13 billion, and it was publicly announced that EDS would be re-branded. The first targeted layoff of 24,600 former EDS workers was announced on September 15, 2008. (The company's 2008 annual report gave the number as 24,700, to be completed by end of 2009.) This round was factored into purchase price as a liability against goodwill. As of September 23, 2009, EDS is known as
HP Enterprise Services
DXC Technology is an American Multinational corporation, multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia.
History
DXC Technology was founded on April 3, 2017 when the Hewlett Packar ...
.
On November 11, 2009,
3Com
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...
and Hewlett-Packard announced that the latter would be acquiring 3Com for in cash. The acquisition was one of the biggest in size among a series of takeovers and acquisitions by technology giants to push their way to become one-stop shops. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, tech giants have constantly felt the pressure to expand beyond their current market niches.
Dell purchased
Perot Systems
Perot Systems was an information technology services provider founded in 1988 by a group of investors led by Ross Perot and based in Plano, Texas, United States. Perot Systems provided information technology services in the industries of health ...
recently to invade into the technology consulting business area previously dominated by
IBM. Hewlett-Packard's latest move marked its incursion into enterprise networking gear market dominated by
Cisco
Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...
.
2010–2012
![HP Mini 1000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/HP_Mini_1000.jpg)
On April 28, 2010,
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 6 ...
and HP announced that the latter would buy the former for in cash and debt. Adding Palm handsets to the HP product line created some overlap with the
iPAQ
The iPAQ is a discontinued Pocket PC and personal digital assistant which was first unveiled by Compaq in April 2000.
HP's line-up of iPAQ devices included PDA-devices, smartphones and GPS-navigators. A substantial number of devices were ...
series of mobile devices, but was thought to significantly improve HP's mobile presence as iPAQ devices had not been selling well. Buying Palm, Inc. gave HP a library of valuable patents and the mobile operating platform,
webOS
webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially ...
. On July 1, 2010, the acquisition of Palm, Inc. was finalized. Purchasing its webOS was a big gamble to build HP's own ecosystem.
On July 1, 2011, HP launched its first tablet,
HP TouchPad, which brought webOS to tablet devices. On September 2, 2010, HP won the
bidding war
A bid price is the highest price that a buyer (i.e., bidder) is willing to pay for some goods. It is usually referred to simply as the "bid". In bid and ask, the bid price stands in contrast to the ask price or "offer", and the difference between ...
for
3PAR with a a share offer () that Dell declined to match. After HP acquired Palm Inc., it phased out the Compaq brand.
On August 6, 2010, Hurd
resigned amid controversy and CFO
Cathie Lesjak assumed the role of interim CEO. Hurd had turned HP around and was widely regarded as one of
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...
's star CEOs, and under his leadership, HP became the largest computer company in the world when measured by total revenue. He was accused of
sexual harassment against a colleague, though the allegations were deemed baseless. The investigation led to questions concerning some of his private expenses and the lack of disclosure related to the friendship.
Some observers have argued that Hurd was innocent, but the board asked for his resignation to avoid
negative public relations.
Public analysis was divided between those who saw it as a commendable tough action by HP in handling expenses irregularities, and those who saw it as an ill-advised, hasty, and expensive reaction in ousting a remarkably capable leader who had turned the business around.
At HP, Hurd oversaw a series of acquisitions worth over $20 billion, which allowed the company to expand into services of networking equipment and smartphones. HP shares dropped by 8.4% in after-hours trading, hitting a 52-week low with $9 billion in market capitalization shaved off.
Larry Ellison
Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American business magnate and investor who is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the American computer technology ...
publicly attacked HP's board for Hurd's ousting, stating that the HP board had "made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago".
On September 30, 2010,
Léo Apotheker
Léo Apotheker (born 18 September 1953) is a German business executive. He served briefly as the chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard from November 2010 until his dismissal in September 2011. He also served as co-chief executive officer o ...
was named HP's new CEO and president. His appointment sparked a strong reaction from Ellison, who complained that Apotheker had been in charge of
SAP
Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant.
Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separ ...
when one of its subsidiaries was systematically stealing software from Oracle. SAP accepted that its subsidiary, which has now closed, illegally accessed Oracle intellectual property. Following Hurd's departure, HP was seen to be problematic by the market, with margins falling and having failed to redirect and establish itself in major new markets such as cloud and mobile services. Apotheker's strategy was to broadly aim at disposing hardware and moving into the more profitable
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
services
Service may refer to:
Activities
* Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty
* Civil service, the body of employees of a government
* Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...
sector
Sector may refer to:
Places
* Sector, West Virginia, U.S.
Geometry
* Circular sector, the portion of a disc enclosed by two radii and a circular arc
* Hyperbolic sector, a region enclosed by two radii and a hyperbolic arc
* Spherical sector, a p ...
. On August 18, 2011, HP announced that it would strategically exit the
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
and
tablet computer
A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being com ...
business, and focus on higher-margin "strategic priorities of Cloud, solutions and software with an emphasis on enterprise, commercial and government markets". It also contemplated selling off its personal computer division or spinning it off into a separate company, and quitting PC development while continuing to sell servers and other equipment to business customers, which was a strategy undertaken by IBM in 2005.
HP's stock dropped by about a further 40% after the company abruptly announced a number of decisions: to discontinue its webOS device business (mobile phones and tablet computers), the intent to sell its
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
division (at the time HP was the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world), and to acquire British big data software firm Autonomy Corporation, Autonomy for a 79% control premium, premium, seen externally as an "absurdly high" price
for a business with known concerns over its accounts. Media analysts described HP's actions as a "botched strategy shift" and a "chaotic" attempt to rapidly Turnaround management, reposition HP and enhance earnings.
[Why Hewlett-Packard's Impulse Buy Didn't Pay Off](_blank)
Bloomberg BusinessWeek November 29, 2012: ''"Apotheker believed that HP's platform was sinking ... [and] appeared to be in a hurry to transform the company ... In a rapid series of moves announced in August 2011, Apotheker killed HP's six-week-old TouchPad tablet, explored plans for a spin-out of its PC business, and championed the acquisition of Autonomy. One former HP executive who worked there at the time says it appeared that Apotheker and the board didn't know what to do, and were trying anything they could think of. It wasn't a strategy, he says. It was chaos ... Oracle CEO Larry Ellison called Autonomy's asking price 'absurdly high'."''['] The Autonomy acquisition was objected to by HP's own CFO.
[Rage of the Titans: Whitman vs Lynch](_blank)
''The Daily Telegraph'', November 25, 2012
HP lost more than in market capitalization during Apotheker's tenure, and on September 22, 2011, the HP Board of Directors fired him as chief executive and replaced him with fellow board member and former eBay chief Meg Whitman, with Raymond J. Lane as executive chairman. Although Apotheker served barely ten months, he received over in compensation. Weeks later, HP announced that a review had concluded their PC division was too integrated and critical to business operations, and the company reaffirmed their commitment to the Personal Systems Group. In November 2012, HP Write-off, wrote off almost related to the Autonomy acquisition, which became the subject of intense litigation, as HP accused Autonomy's previous management of fraudulently exaggerating Autonomy's financial position and called in law enforcement and regulators in both countries, while Autonomy's previous management accused HP of "textbook" Disinformation, obfuscation and blame shifting, finger pointing to protect HP's executives from criticism and conceal HP culpability, their prior knowledge of Autonomy's financial position, and gross mismanagement of Autonomy after acquisition.
[Motion by Hussain, 2014-08-11](_blank)
p.1-6
On March 21, 2012, HP said its printing and PC divisions would become one unit headed by Todd Bradley from the PC division, and printing chief Vyomesh Joshi left the company.
On May 23, 2012, HP announced plans to lay off approximately 27,000 employees, after posting a profit decline of 31% in the second quarter of 2012. Profits declined because of the growing popularity of smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices, which slowed down personal computer sales.
On May 30, 2012, HP unveiled its first Carbon neutrality, net zero energy data center, which uses solar energy and other renewable sources instead of traditional power grids.
On July 10, 2012, HP's Server Monitoring Software was discovered to have a Zero-day attack, previously unknown security vulnerability. A security warning was given to customers about two vulnerabilities, and a software patch, patch addressing the issues was released. One month later, HP's official training center was hacked and defaced by a Pakistani hacker known as Hitcher to demonstrate a Web vulnerability.
On September 10, 2012, HP revised their restructuring figures and started cutting 29,000 jobs.
2013–2015
On December 31, 2013, HP revised the number of jobs cut from 29,000 to 34,000 up to October 2014. The number of jobs cut until the end of 2013 was 24,600. At the end of 2013 the company had 317,500 employees. On May 22, 2014, HP announced it would cut a further 11,000 to 16,000 jobs, in addition to the 34,000 announced in 2013. Whitman said: "We are gradually shaping HP into a more nimble, lower-cost, more customer and partner-centric company that can successfully compete across a rapidly changing IT landscape."
During the June 2014 HP Discover customer event in Las Vegas, Whitman and Martin Fink announced a project for a radically new computer architecture called The Machine. Based on memristors and silicon photonics, it was supposed to come into commercialization before the end of the decade, and represented 75% of the research activity in HP Labs at the time.
On October 6, 2014, HP announced it was going to split into two separate companies to separate its personal computer and printer businesses from its technology services. The split, which was first reported by ''The Wall Street Journal'' and confirmed by other media, resulted in two publicly traded companies on November 1, 2015:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas, United States.
HPE was founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, as part of the splitting of the ...
and
HP Inc.
HP Inc. is an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, that develops personal computers (PCs), printers and related supplies, as well as 3D printing solutions.
It was formed on Novembe ...
The split was structured so that Hewlett-Packard changed its name to HP Inc. and spun off Hewlett Packard Enterprise as a new publicly traded company. HP Inc. is the legal successor of old Hewlett-Packard; it retains old Hewlett-Packard's stock price history and its longtime stock ticker symbol, , while Hewlett Packard Enterprise trades under its own symbol, . Whitman became chairman of HP Inc. and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Patricia Russo became chairman of the enterprise business, and Dion Weisler became CEO of HP, Inc.
On October 29, 2014, Hewlett-Packard announced their new Sprout (computer), Sprout personal computer.
In May 2015, the company announced it would be selling its controlling 51 percent stake in its China, Chinese data-networking business to Tsinghua Unigroup for a fee of at least .
Facilities
![Siege HP courtaboeuf](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Siege_HP_courtaboeuf.JPG)
HP's global operations were directed from its headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Its US operations were directed from its facility in an unincorporated area of Harris County, Texas, Harris County, Texas, near Houston. Its Latin America offices were in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County, Florida. Its European offices were in Meyrin, close to Geneva, Switzerland,
["] but it also had a research center in the Paris-Saclay cluster 20 km south of Paris, Paris, France. Its Asia-Pacific offices were in Singapore.
It also had large operations in Leixlip, Ireland;
Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Corvallis, Oregon; Fort Collins, Colorado; Roseville, California; Saint Petersburg, Florida; San Diego, California; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Vancouver, Washington; Conway, Arkansas; and Plano, Texas. In the UK, HP was based at a large site in Bracknell, Berkshire, with offices in various UK locations, including a landmark office tower in London, 88 Wood Street. Its acquisition of
3Com
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...
expanded its employee base to Marlborough, Massachusetts, where it has been manufacturing its convertible laptop series since late 2019.
The company also had a large workforce and numerous offices in Bucharest, Romania, and at Bangalore, India, to address their back end and IT operations. MphasiS, which is headquartered at Bangalore, also enabled HP to increase their footprint in the city as it was a subsidiary of EDS which the company acquired.
Products and organizational structure
![Hewlett-Packard-Japan-Head-office](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Hewlett-Packard-Japan-Head-office.jpg)
HP produced lines of printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, personal digital assistants, servers, workstation computers, and computers for home and small-business use; many of the computers came from the 2002 merger with Compaq. HP promoted itself as supplying not just hardware and software, but also a full range of services to design, implement, and support IT infrastructure.
HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) was described by the company in 2005 as "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".
Products and technology associated with IPG include:
* Inkjet printer, Inkjet and LaserJet printers
* consumables and related products
* Officejet multifunction printer, all-in-one multifunction printer/scanner/faxes
* Designjet and Scitex Large Format Printers
* Indigo Digital Press
* HP Web Jetadmin printer management software
* HP Output Management suite of software
* LightScribe optical recording technology
* HP Photosmart digital cameras and photo printers
* HP SPaM
* Snapfish, Snapfish by HP, a photo sharing and photo products service.
On December 23, 2008, HP released iPrint Photo for iPhone.
HP's Personal Systems Group (PSG) was claimed by HP in 2005 to be "one of the leading vendors of personal computers ("PCs") in the world based on unit volume shipped and annual revenue".
PSG dealt with:
* business PCs and accessories
* consumer PCs and accessories, (e.g., HP Pavilion (computer), HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario, VoodooPC)
* handheld computing (e.g., iPAQ Pocket PC)
* digital "connected" entertainment (e.g., HP MediaSmart TVs, HP MediaSmart Servers, HP MediaVaults, DVD+RW drives)
* Apple iPod+HP, iPod (until November 2005).
HP Enterprise Business (EB) incorporated HP Technology Services and HP Enterprise Services, Enterprise Services (an amalgamation of the former Electronic Data Systems, EDS, and what was known as HP Services). HP Enterprise Security Services oversaw professional services such as network security, information security and information assurance/compliancy, HP Software Division, and Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Group (ESSN). The Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Group (ESSN) oversaw "back end" products like storage and servers. HP Networking (former ProCurve) was responsible for the NW family of products.
![HP PhotoSmart SDIO Kamera](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/HP_PhotoSmart_SDIO_Kamera.jpg)
HP Software Division was the company's enterprise software unit, which produced and marketed its brand of enterprise-management software, HP OpenView. From September 2005 HP purchased several software companies as part of a publicized, deliberate strategy to augment its software offerings for large business customers. HP Software sold several categories of software, including:
* business service management software
* application lifecycle management software
* mobile apps
* big data and analytics
* service and portfolio management software
* automation and orchestration software
* enterprise security software
** ArcSight
** Fortify Software
** HP Atalla, Atalla
** TippingPoint
HP Software also provided software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing solutions, and software services, including consulting, education, professional services, and support.
HP's Office of Strategy and Technology had four main functions:
* To steer the company's $3.6 billion research and development investment
* To foster the development of the company's global technical community
* To lead the company's strategy and corporate development efforts
* To perform worldwide corporate marketing activities
The research arm of HP is called HP Labs.
HP also offered managed services by which they provide complete IT-support solutions for other companies and organizations. Some examples of these include:
* offering "Professional Support" and desktop "Premier Support" for Microsoft in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa, EMEA marketplace. This was done from the Leixlip campus near Dublin (Ireland), Dublin, Sofia and Israel. Support was offered for Microsoft Windows, Exchange, SharePoint, and some office applications.
* outsourced services for companies like Bank of Ireland, some UK banks, the U.S. defense forces.
* the computerisation project at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Staff and culture
Notable people
* Michael Capellas (Compaq CEO/Chairman – HP President)
* Barney Oliver, founder and director of HP laboratories
*
Steve Wozniak
* Thomas Perkins (businessman), Tom Perkins
*
Carly Fiorina
Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (''née'' Sneed; born September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and politician, known primarily for her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP). As chief executive officer of HP from 1999 to 2005, Fiorina was ...
, Republican Party presidential candidates, 2016, 2016 Republican presidential candidate
* Matt Shaheen, management consultant executive at
HP Enterprise Services
DXC Technology is an American Multinational corporation, multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia.
History
DXC Technology was founded on April 3, 2017 when the Hewlett Packar ...
in Plano, Texas, Plano, Texas; Republican Party (United States), Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives
Corporate social responsibility
In July 2007, the company announced that it had met its 2004 target to recycle one billion pounds of electronics, toner, and ink cartridges. It set a new goal of recycling a further two billion pounds of hardware by the end of 2010. In 2006, the company recovered 187 million pounds of electronics.
In 2008, HP released its supply chain emissions data.
In September 2009, ''Newsweek'' ranked HP No. 1 on its 2009 Green Rankings of America's 500 largest corporations. According to Environmental Leader (now Environment + Energy Leader), "Hewlett-Packard earned its number one position due to its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction programs, and was the first major IT company to report GHG emissions associated with its supply chain, according to the ranking. In addition, HP has made an effort to remove toxic substances from its products, though Greenpeace has targeted the company for not doing better."
HP took the top spot on ''Corporate Responsibility Magazine''s 100 Best Corporate Citizens List for 2010. HP beat out other Russell 1000 Index companies because of its leadership in seven categories including environment, climate changes and corporate philanthropy. In 2009, HP was ranked fifth.
''Fortune'' magazine named HP one of the World's Most Admired Companies in 2010, placing it No. 2 in the computer industry and No. 32 overall in its list of the top 50. This year in the computer industry HP was ranked No. 1 in social responsibility, long-term investment, global competitiveness, and use of corporate assets.
In May 2011, HP released a Global Responsibility report covering accomplishments in 2010. It provides a comprehensive view of HP's global citizenship programs, performance, and goals and describes how HP used its technology, influence, and expertise to make a positive impact on the world. The company's 2009 report won best corporate responsibility report of the year, and claims HP decreased its total energy use by 9 percent when compared with 2008. HP recovered a total of 118,000 tonnes of electronic products and supplies for recycling in 2009, including 61 million print cartridges.
In an April 2010 ''San Francisco Chronicle'' article, HP was one of 12 companies commended for "designing products to be safe from the start, following the principles of green chemistry". The commendations came from Environment California, an environmental advocacy group, who praised select companies in the Golden State and the Bay Area for their conservational efforts.
In May 2010, HP was named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute. It was one of 100 companies to earn the distinction of top winner and was the only computer hardware vendor to be recognized.
HP was listed in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics manufacturers according to their policies on sustainability, energy and climate, and green products. In November 2011, HP secured first place (out of 15) in this ranking with a score of 5.9. It scored the most points on the new Sustainable Operations criteria, having the best program for measuring and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from its suppliers and scoring maximum points for its thorough paper procurement policy.
In the November 2012 report, HP was ranked second with a score of 5.7.
HP earned recognition of its work in data privacy and security. In 2010 the company ranked No. 4 in the Ponemon Institute's annual study of the most trusted companies for privacy. Since 2006, HP has worked directly with the U.S. Congress, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Department of Commerce to establish a new strategy for federal legislation. HP played a key role in work toward the December 2010 FTC report "Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change".
After winning nine straight annual "Most Respected Company in China" awards from the Economic Observer and Peking University, HP China added the "10 Year Contribution" award to its list of accolades.
In its 2012 rankings of consumer electronics companies on progress relating to conflict minerals, the Enough Project rated HP second out of 24 companies.
Brand
![HP Pavilion (angle)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/HP_Pavilion_%28angle%29.jpg)
According to a 2009 BusinessWeek study, HP was the world's 11th most valuable brand.
HP had many sponsorships, such as Mission: SPACE in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort. From 1995 to 1999, and again from 2013, HP had been the shirt sponsor of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur F.C. From 1997 to 1999 they sponsored Australian Football League club North Melbourne Football Club. They also sponsored the BMW Williams Formula 1 team until 2005 (a sponsorship formerly held by Compaq), and since 2010 sponsored Renault F1. HP also had the naming rights arrangement for the HP Pavilion at San Jose, whose naming rights were acquired by SAP AG and consequently renamed SAP Center at San Jose. HP also maintained a number of corporate sponsorships in the business sector, including sponsorships of trade organisations including Fespa (print trade exhibitions), and O'Reilly Media's Velocity (web development) conference.
After the acquisition of Compaq in 2002, HP maintained the Compaq Presario brand on low-end home desktops and laptops, the HP Compaq brand on business desktops and laptops, and the ProLiant, HP ProLiant brand on Intel-architecture servers. The HP Pavilion brand was used on home entertainment laptops and all home desktops.
Tandem's "NonStop" servers were rebranded as "HP Integrity NonStop".
Controversies
Restatement
In March 2003, HP restated its first-quarter cash flow from operations, reducing it by 18 percent because of an accounting error. The actual cash flow from operations was $647 million, and not $791 million as reported; HP shifted $144 million to net cash used in investing activities.
Spying scandal
On September 5, 2006, Shawn Cabalfin and David O'Neil of ''Newsweek'' wrote that HP's general counsel, at the behest of chairwoman Patricia C. Dunn, Patricia Dunn, contracted a team of independent security experts to investigate board members and several journalists to identify the source of an information leak. In turn, those security experts recruited private investigators who used pretexting, which involved investigators impersonating HP board members and nine journalists (including reporters for CNET, ''The New York Times'' and ''The Wall Street Journal'') in order to obtain their phone records. The information leaked related to HP's long-term strategy and was published as part of a CNET article in January 2006. Most HP employees accused of criminal acts have since been acquitted.
Hardware
In November 2007, HP released a BIOS update covering a wide range of laptops with the intent to speed up the computer fan and have it run constantly while the computer was on or off to prevent the overheating of defective Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) that had been shipped to many of the original equipment manufacturers, including HP, Dell, and Apple. The defect concerned the new packaging material used by Nvidia from 2007 onwards in joining the graphics chip onto the motherboard, which did not perform well under thermal cycling and was prone to develop stress cracks – effectively severing the connection between the GPU and the motherboard that led to a blank screen.
In July 2008, HP issued an extension to the initial one-year warranty to replace the motherboards of selected models. However this option was not extended to all models with the defective Nvidia chipsets, despite research showing that these computers were also affected by the fault. Furthermore, the replacement of the motherboard was a temporary fix, since the fault was inherent in all units of the affected models from the point of manufacture, including the replacement motherboards offered by HP as a free "repair". Since then, several websites have been documenting the issue. There have been several small-claims lawsuits filed in several states, as well as suits filed in other countries. HP also faced a class-action lawsuit in 2009 over its i7 processor computers: the complainants stated that their systems consistently locked up within 30 minutes of powering on. Even after being replaced with newer i7 systems, the lockups continued.
Lawsuit against Oracle
HP filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court in Santa Clara, claiming that Oracle had breached an agreement to support the Itanium microprocessor used in HP's high-end enterprise servers. On June 15, 2011, HP sent a "formal legal demand" letter to Oracle in an attempt to force them to reverse its decision to discontinue software development on Intel Itanium microprocessors and build its own servers.
HP won the lawsuit in 2012, which required Oracle to continue producing software compatible with the Itanium processor. HP was awarded $3 billion in damages against Oracle on June 30, 2016,
arguing that Oracle canceling support damaged HP's Itanium server brand. Oracle said it would appeal both the decision and damages.
HP wage and hour lawsuit
Several class action firms filed a class action lawsuit on January 12, 2012, against HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (“HP”), entitled "Jeffrey Wall, etc. v. HP, Inc." (formerly known as Hewlett-Packard Company, et al.), Case No. 30-2012-00537897, pending in the Superior Court of California, County of Orange. According to the lawsuit, HP allegedly failed to pay commission payments and incentive compensation that its California sales employees were owed within the timeframes proscribed by California law (Labor Code §§ 201, 202 and 204). In 2017, FDAzar obtained a settlement of $25 million for class participants and changed the way HP pays incentive compensation and commission payments.
Takeover of Autonomy
In November 2012, HP recorded a write-down of around $8.8 billion related to its acquisition a year earlier of the UK-based Autonomy Corporation Public limited company, PLC. HP accused Autonomy of deliberately inflating the value of the company prior to its takeover, which the former management team of Autonomy denied.
At the time, HP had fired its previous CEO for expenses irregularities a year before, and appointed Apotheker as CEO and president. HP was seen as problematic by the market, with margins falling and having failed to redirect and establish itself in major new markets such as cloud and mobile services.
As part of Apotheker's strategy, Autonomy was acquired by HP in October 2011. HP paid for 87.3% of the shares, valuing Autonomy at around () overall, a Control premium, premium of around 79% over market price. The deal was widely criticized as "absurdly high", a "botched strategy shift" and a "chaotic" attempt to rapidly Turnaround management, reposition HP and enhance earnings,
and had been objected to even by HP's own CFO.
Within a year, Apotheker was fired, major cultural conflict, culture clashes became apparent, and HP wrote off $8.8 billion of Autonomy's value.
HP claim this resulted from "accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures" by the previous management, who in turn accused HP of a "textbook example of gaming the system, defensive stalling"
to conceal evidence of its own prior knowledge, gross management, mismanagement, and undermining of the company, noting public awareness since 2009 of its financial reporting issues
and that even HP's CFO disagreed with the price paid.
External observers generally stated that only a small part of the write-off appears to be due to accounting mis-statements, and that HP had previously overpaid for businesses.
[The mysterious case of Hewlett-Packard's Autonomy deal](_blank)
''Marketwatch'', August 19, 2014
The Serious Fraud Office (United Kingdom), Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the SEC joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI in investigating the potential anomalies. HP incurred damage with its stock falling to its lowest in decades.
Three lawsuits were brought by shareholders against HP for the fall in value of HP shares. In August 2014, a United States district court judge threw out a proposed settlement, which Autonomy's previous management had argued would be collusive lawsuit, collusive and intended to divert scrutiny of HP's own responsibility and knowledge. It essentially engaged the plaintiff's attorneys from the existing cases and redirected them against the previous Autonomy vendors and management for a fee of up to , with plaintiffs agreeing to end any claims against HP's management and similarly redirect those claims against the previous Autonomy vendors and management. In January 2015 the SFO closed its investigation as the likelihood of a successful prosecution was low. The dispute continued in the US, and is being investigated by the UK and Ireland Financial Reporting Council. On June 9, 2015, HP agreed to pay to investors who bought HP shares between August 19, 2011, and November 20, 2012, to settle the lawsuits over the Autonomy purchase.
Another term of the shareholder settlement was to sue Autonomy management, which occurred in London in 2019. HP "failed to produce a smoking gun for the fraud it alleges",
and its accountants admitted that they "never formally prepared anything to attribute the irregularities to the amount of the fraud".
Israeli settlements
On October 25, 2012, Richard Falk, the United Nations Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, called to boycott HP and other businesses that profit from Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands until they brought their operations in line with international human rights and humanitarian law. In 2014, the Presbyterian Church (USA), Presbyterian Church voted to move forward with divestment from HP to pressure Israeli in regards to their policies toward Palestinians. In 2015, the Human Rights Commission of Portland, Oregon, requested to place Caterpillar Inc, Caterpillar, G4S, HP, and Motorola Solutions on the city's "Do Not Buy" list.
Bribery
On April 9, 2014, an administrative proceeding before the SEC was settled by HP consenting to an order acknowledging that HP had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) when HP subsidiaries in Russia, Poland, and Mexico made improper payments to government officials to obtain or retain lucrative public contracts.
The SEC's order found that HP's subsidiary in Russia paid more than through agents and various shell companies to a Russian government official to retain a multimillion-dollar contract with the federal prosecutor's office; in Poland, HP's subsidiary provided gifts and cash bribes worth more than to a Polish government official to obtain contracts with the national police agency; and to win a software sale to Mexico's state-owned petroleum company, HP's subsidiary in Mexico paid more than in inflated commissions to a consultant with close ties to company officials, one of whom was funneled money. HP agreed to pay to settle the SEC charges and a parallel criminal case.
See also
* ArcSight
* Fortify Software, Fortify
* HP calculators
* HP Linux Imaging and Printing
* HP Software & Solutions
* Connect (users group), HP User Group
* List of acquisitions by Hewlett-Packard
* List of computer system manufacturers
* List of Hewlett-Packard products
* TippingPoint
References
External links
*
The Museum of HP CalculatorsProtect 724 Community
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