Originally, today (May 15th) was the scheduled announcement day for HPs (NYSE HPQ) second-quarter earnings. But a preliminary announcement was made on the 13th, along with the official clarification of the EDS (NYSE EDS) deal, and now the official numbers day has been pushed out until Tuesday the 20th.

So whats changed since the beginning of this week, when I posted in this blog, virtually crowing about the fact that printer results, could be front and center this time, even if in a potentially negative way? (See "A little pressure on HP (NYSE HPQ) printer results".) Well, later that same day (Monday the 12th), the word came that HP was considered an 11-figure deal to acquire Ross Perots old company, EDS, and ever since, no one has been thinking about printers at all, it would seem.

Thats not quite true, actually (i.e. the no one thinking about printers point). In a quick search of the Web this morning, PC World has a provocatively title piece, "Surprise! What HPs Multibillion Dollar Bid to Buy EDS Means for You" by Stephanie Overby of CIO. The piece contains this paragraph (my italics added) thats surely toungue-and-cheek, given IPGs profit margins, but still, what a difference a few days and a nearly $14 Billion deal makes!

Bulking up the services side would better HPs position against its bigger IT services brethren like IBM and Accenture . It could even enable HP to shed that darn printer business once and for all.

Read More..

Business Week writer Aaron Ricadela has an interesting background piece ("HPs CloudPrint Heads into BlackBerrys") on the Monday HP (NYSE HPQ) announcement with Research in Motion (CSE RIM). Its a very upbeat account of the development of the CloudPrint service, which Ive covered here since its initial announcement several years ago, and mentioned in a May 4th post covering the HP/RIM deal. (See "HP (NYSE HPQ), RIM announce alliance -- includes CloudPrint for BlackBerry".)

Ricadelas account focuses on the revamped HP Labs (HPL) and uses CloudPrint as a proof point that the legendary HPL has the ongoing ability to come up with big, important innovations. Actually, at least in CloudPrints case, maybe not so much on the "big", at least for now, but certainly the value of in-house innovation cant be understated. The passage quoting Shaw Wu of Kaufman Brothers gets to the heart of it:

Shaw Wu, a senior analyst at Kaufman Brothers , notes that while licensing revenue from products like CloudPrint is a drop in the bucket for a company with $118 billion in annual sales, technologies that emerge from HP Labs can give the company advantages in PCs, printing, and other key markets. "If theyre able to out-engineer Dell (DELL) and Acer, not only does it drive out costs, but they can change their strategy," he says.

Looking at the power of the story, my Google News Search index for "CloudPrint BlackBerry" is coming up with about 800 hits this afternoon (May 6th, two days after the initial release), which is a great number for a printing story. And it proves the lesson -- team up with something sexy, like Mobile Phones, to get the buzz back in printing. And Tweets? They are aplenty! A Twitter search yields NUMEROUS tweets referring to the announcement, but aside from a few valuable links, what can really be said in 140 characters?

And back to the Business Week story? Just one little bone to pick. Hey its HP -- did you really have to pull a printer out of the trash for the demo?

Read More..

Andrea Orr of eWeek.com has posted an interview with "HPs Web Print Guru", Senior VP David Murphy, head of the HP (NYSE HPQ) Imaging and Printing Groups Web Services and Software group. The piece contains some interesting thoughts on HPs strategy around what its been calling "Print 2.0", notably around past and potential future "growth" acquisitions, including Januarys Exstream deal.

Also interesting to note that while Murphy covers consumer as well as enterprise opportunities, most of the discussion seems to come back to either photo retailers and their efforts, including new photo printing technology for traditional prints, as well as in-store photo books and other novelty items, which may also available for home printing, as exemplified by their Disney/Hannah Montana concert photobook offering. (Interesting that this reminds us that PR value may be a fleeting thing...)

Blog printing is not mentioned. And while some effort continues at HP on this front, the blog printing experiment at TechCrunch that I blogged about last summer (see "TechCrunch getting hard copy") seems to be over.
______

PS -- Andrea Orr also had an interesting update on HPs Exstream acquisition earlier this month that Id flagged and had been waiting to work into a post. See "HP Exstream Takes Printing Business in New Direction."

Read More..

While some anxious speculation over HPs (NYSE HPQ) 2QFY08 Imaging and Printing results surfaced earlier in the month (see "A little pressure on HP (NYSE HPQ) printer results"), the numbers released as part of HPs earnings announcement today look very solid. The HPQ conference call is now proceeding, and highlights relevant to Imaging and Printing will be available here as the transcript becomes available.

Read More..