Over the past few months most publicity about Hewlett Packard (HP) has been relatively negative concerning the offloading of a contentious CEO, and the loss of market share to major competitors in the business and personal computer areas. Despite this situation HP has just announced very good financial results for Q1 of this year with increased market shares in most area of its business. This has particularly been the case in the office and consumer printer markets where HP maintains its leadership positions.

I have just had the opportunity to attend a unique HP educational and promotional event, this being the HP Labs University. This is an event held for HP’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region at which over 300 journalists and analysts spend three days in Tenerife. This was a particularly interesting event as it concentrated on HP’s areas of innovation and development, emphasizing the HP Invent element of its corporate identity. It gave a very good indication of the company’s future business directions. The key aspect of the event was its concentration on the consumer and lifestyle markets. The majority of journalists came from the computer, photographic and lifestyle press.

HP is a massive business and perhaps over the past twenty years has been the most successful IT based supplier in the industry. It has a turnover of around $80 billion, which at this time predominantly comes from the office and SOHO printing markets and from IT and IT services. In most of these areas it maintains a market leadership or near market leadership position, but in most of these areas it is getting increasing levels of competition. For HP to grow and become a $100 billion plus company it needs to develop new markets, and in this it is targeting the consumer lifestyle market. In this it is setting itself up to challenge companies like Sony, and to endeavor to gain market leadership in the digital photographic market. The future for HP is to retain its strong position in the office and SOHO areas, but to move its technology and products into the living space in the home.