Apple takes a lot of flack for the business concept "Designed in California, made in China." But even the most casual hi-tech observer will acknowledge it's an industry standard, not the exception.
So you may be forgiven if you heaved a heavy sigh but didn't raise an eyebrow at the news that Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, plans to announce jobs cuts 30,000 or more jobs, most of them outside China, when H.P. announces earnings for its second fiscal quarter on Wednesday.
The New York Times adds today that unnamed executives say HP will seek layoffs and voluntary retirements from across the company. The total downsizing could come out to as much as 10 percent of HP’s 324,000-person work force.
HP is a storied Silicon Valley pioneer, but these days many say it seems like a dinosaur compared to newbie companies making their billions on cloud computing, smartphones and tablets. PCs? Printers? "Pshaw!" say the critics, although it's hard to separate HP's wander in the wilderness from the executive boardroom drama that has clouded the company's image in recent years. There's also plenty of grist for students of management to study.
CEO Meg Whitman, erstwhile candidate for California Governor, took the HP big seat promising to set the company on a growth course, and HP recently announced a series of lightweight laptops, called ultrabooks, intended to compete against similar machines from Apple. The company also hopes to win profits with a cloud-computing data center using its newest, more energy-efficient servers.