By spinning off Hewlett-Packard Co.’s personal-computer business, Chief Executive Officer Leo Apotheker is shedding a unit the founders never liked anyway.
From Hewlett-Packard’s beginnings in 1939, the company’s founders set out to invent one-of-a-kind products and tools for engineers, they never intended to become the biggest provider of a commodity product. Now that PC profits are waning amid competition from Asian rivals, Apotheker is poised to return to the original philosophy.
Hewlett-Packard’s move mirrors a broader shift among U.S. technology companies, with fewer of them designing and selling PCs -- a trend that began when International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) offloaded its PC unit to China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. in 2005. Dell Inc. (DELL), the second-largest PC maker, also is focusing more on services, though PCs still make up about half its sales.
