Little to laugh about in the movie that is HP Review

The Globe and Mail: 03/01/2013

IM3.01 - Identify companies that have made mistakes when entering markets and describe the most common mistakes.

Summary

California-based technology company, Hewlett-Packard Co. created another tablet, recently launched its HP Slate7 in an effort to outdo its first released tablet. The original one, the TouchPad, was removed from store shelves in as short as just seven weeks. On a positive note, HP’s stock has jumped more than 75% since its low of $11.35 American dollars in November 2012. Since November 20th, this is the second best performing stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500, following Netflix as the best. The company is currently experiencing new changes in top management with the replacement of not one but three directors. The current president, Meg Whitman, is HP’s fourth CEO in the past couple of years and the constant changing of top management has been one of the biggest weaknesses for the company, making it less stable and possibly contributing to the loss of other staff members. Whitman wants HP to continue as a company that offers corporations ‘anything from a laptop to a data centre’ and therefore it will remain as a seller of these typical technological devices for a while. With the late release of its tablet though, reviews have suggested that HP has no innovative edge to the HP Slate7.

HP's new Slate7 could just be another Android tablet for consumers
Source: Hitechreview.com

Connection

Hewlett-Packard Co. is one of the many examples in today’s technology companies that has had products fail in different markets. By entering the tablet market, Hewlett-Packard probably thought that it would be a great chance for them to increase their sales and compete with other companies that have already sold millions such as Apple, Blackberry, and Samsung. The concept of creating a new product for any company is great because that allows for unique ideas in innovation and attracting new customers. On the contrary, one of the most common mistakes companies make when entering these new product markets is entering them too late. Hewlett-Packard released its first tablet, the TouchPad in 2011 - the same year as the Blackberry Playbook and one year after the Apple iPad. The main problem with releasing products like tablets or new smartphones in North America, at least, is that many consumers are very impatient for these technological devices. The minute that everyone heard about the iPad release, most consumers decided to go out and buy one (if they were interested in purchasing a tablet) so almost any product similar to it that was released shortly afterwards was either irrelevant or less exciting to them. Because so many people already have their iPads, Playbooks or Galaxy Tablets, the HP Slate7 is not going to sell too well. That is unless the product has a more unique feature to offer, a strong competitive advantage, such as a time shift or magnifying lens camera that shows new developments in technology. Companies like HP need to take more time when it comes to creating a new product or even conduct some form of market research to discover what it is that their target consumers are looking to purchase.