At that time, HP's initial capital was only $500, and the company's main business was oscilloscope electronic instruments.
After World War II, Stanford University met with financial difficulties. Stanford has more than 8,000 mu of land, which is equivalent to the size of more than a dozen Summer Palace. The land really needed may not even be one tenth. Up to now, Stanford's barren land still accounts for more than half. However, according to the Stanford couple's will, university land cannot be sold, so it is impossible to make money directly from idle land. Later, a professor named Tellman came up with an idea. He carefully studied Stanford's will and found that Stanford was not prohibited from renting land. So, Stanford took out a piece of land and established Stanford StanfordIndustrialPark, and HP became the first company to enter the industrial park. Hewlett-Packard started from here, its business developed by leaps and bounds, and many companies also settled in Stanford Industrial Park. In the computer age, because most of these companies are engaged in semiconductor-related technologies, they have since been called Silicon Valley. Stanford University, since the 1960s, has not only weathered the storm, but also become a top university in the world. HP has become a typical representative of Silicon Valley myth.
In 1960s, HP began to enter the field of small computers.
By the mid-1990s, HP had become a giant company integrating scientific instruments, medical instruments and computer products, and reached its peak with the rapid development of American economy. At that time, HP was the second largest computer and instrument manufacturer in the world after IBM, and its product line was even longer than IBM.
There are roughly two reasons for HP's decline, the mistakes of leaders and the impact of "Made in Japan/China".
1June 1996, Fiorina became the new CEO of HP and the worst CEO in HP's history.
First of all, she reorganized the company for the first time, that is, her instrument department (now Agilent) was split and listed. Hewlett-Packard received considerable cash from Agilent's listing.
Then the second time, it merged with Compaq, and Compaq still occupied the second place in the microcomputer market share, but the river was losing money.
At that time, Dell accounted for 365,438+0% of the American microcomputer market, while Compaq and Hewlett-Packard accounted for 37%. Fiorina's wishful thinking is to build the world's largest microcomputer company through mergers and acquisitions and form an advantage over Dell. However, Fiorina's proposal was opposed by two founder families, including HP. Many shareholders are worried that HP, which is already unprofitable, will eventually be dragged down by Compaq, which is losing money.
In order to pass the plan, all shareholders' meetings must agree. Fiorina did a lot of work to mobilize minority shareholders to vote, so that the proposal was passed. Finally, the shareholders approved the decision to buy Compaq by 565,438+0% to 48%. In the 5 1% affirmative vote, a considerable proportion came from Fiorina's vote.
Now, Fiorina must come up with real skills to do a good job of slimming HP. Unfortunately, under her leadership, the core business of HP is the Spring Festival in Wang Xiaoer, which is getting worse every year. It lagged far behind Sun in workstation business, and then simply withdrew from the competition. In the field of microcomputer, the gap between it and the leader Dell is getting bigger and bigger, and there is no sign of reversal. In the printer industry, its wishful thinking of making ink cartridges by selling printers is simply impossible. In the printer market, HP is the largest company in the world, but its market share has been eroded by Japanese companies Canon and Epson.
In 2002, HP suffered its first huge loss in more than a decade.
Only three years later, Fiorina left HP sadly. Her series of wrong decisions and mediocre management skills pushed HP, the first superstar in the history of Silicon Valley, to the edge.
Fortunately, a year later, under the leadership of the new CEO Mark Hurd, HP pulled back from the brink.
Hurd made drastic reforms to HP as soon as he took office. He first abolished the high-level research department that was of little use to HP. HP's research institutes have a long history, including the original DEC research institute inherited from Compaq, in addition to HP's own early research institutes. The latter was once the American Computer Research Institute, second only to IBM Research Institute. Hewlett-Packard Research Institute includes many famous scientists, including Turing Prize winners.
The second thing Hurd did was to take back the PC market share from Dell. For example, Hurd adopted a consignment mode that was contrary to Dell's direct selling mode. In the past, Dell greatly reduced the cost of distribution channels through direct sales, making Dell the cheapest brand machine in the United States. On the other hand, Hurd even entrusted Carrefour to sell computers on a commission basis.
Although HP has regained its vitality in Hurd's hands, it is a pity that the nature of HP has changed from a high-tech company to a consumer electronics company focusing on household appliances.
Hewlett-Packard is the victim of the Asian financial crisis.
The impact of Asian manufacturing is not only to limit profit margins, but also to involve Asian companies in formulating business models and rules of the game.
In order to offset the impact of Asian manufacturing, European and American companies strongly encourage and support OEM (original equipment manufacturer) to make in Asia, which can reduce their costs, but will do everything possible to prevent Asian companies from playing their own brands because it will pose a threat to them. It can be said that American companies like the OEM king Guo Taiming very much, but they don't like Kōnosuke Matsushita's Ren Zheng Fei and Huawei very much.
During 1999, HP's product line was divided into three directions: traditional scientific instruments, such as multimeter and oscilloscope; Medical instruments, such as nuclear magnetic resonance; Computers and their peripherals.
In the first area, HP has a technical advantage. Its competitors are mainly Japanese companies, which catch up quickly and Japanese products have an advantage in price.
In the second field, GE (General Electric) is no ordinary opponent. For hundreds of years, it is a rare evergreen tree in the world, and its nuclear magnetic resonance machine can never be surpassed by HP. Therefore, it may not be a bad decision for HP to separate the medical equipment department. It turns out that today's Agilent really can't catch up with GE's medical device department.
In the final computer field, HP has many competitors, from early IBM and DEC to later Sun and Dell. In the field of expanding printers, HP was threatened by Epson and Canon.