HP Ink Printers Weakening in Marketplace
During a hectic stretch in the waning days of May, Vyomesh Joshi, Hewlett-Packard’s high-energy printing chief, was darting around Europe and the Middle East. On May 29, HP unveiled a line of high-end machines aimed at newspapers and publishers. Within days, Joshi was off to Dubai to promote HP ink printers for the reams of pages consumers are expected to print as the booming city gets wired for broadband.
If the jet-setting and product announcements convey a sense of urgency, they should. HP’s ink printer consumer sales have declined four of the past five quarters, including a 3% drop in the three-month period that ended Apr. 30, amid slower-than-expected demand for digital-photo printing. Quarterly profits were flat at $1.2 billion. Some Wall Street analysts expect revenue in the larger imaging and printing group run by Joshi to grow less than 5% in the fiscal year that ends in October, compared with growth of 6% in 2006 and 2007.
Get Discount HP Ink and HP Toner at Concord Supplies
Make no mistake. Joshi’s imaging and printing group is HP’s most profitable and is expected to supply a quarter of the company’s sales and 40% of profits this year. But its bread-and-butter consumer inkjet cartridge business has been showing signs of weakness, and Chief Executive Mark Hurd has made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the performance. “We could have done better than we did,” Hurd said during a conference call with analysts on Feb. 20, referring to a 5% drop in consumer inkjet sales. “And just to be very blunt, I’m not real happy about it.”
Read more about this BusinessWeek article here.
Category: Printer Ink News Tags: Hewlett-Packard | HP | hp business | ink cartridges | laser toner cartridges | printer supplies