Hewlett-Packard will be cutting around 30,000 jobs next week, The New York Times reported Thursday. According to Meg Whitman, the company's chief executive, the plan involves using the funds that were conserved from the cuts to improve the efficiency of HP's sales force and bring on new products.
According to HP executives, the company is having to layoff and search for voluntary retirements throughout the company. It may result in the reduction in 10 percent of HP's 324,000-person work force. However, the company's offices in China will most likely be unaffected.
One of HP's senior executives stated that Ms. Whitman, who took on the role in September 2011, "is trying to build a new company. In March, the Financial Times reported that the company had combined its PC and printer divisions. It also described the "recovery plan" as creating "fewer products, lower costs, greater simplicity of operations." She also joined the company making a promise to shareholders that they would have their money returned to them. At present, Ms. Whitman has been successful in increasing the company's "stock dividend".
In 2011, HPs revenue was around $127 billion, but it only achieved net earnings of $7.1 billion. The decline in the company's earnings may be due to its former head, Léo Apotheker, who caused the business to lose 43 percent of its share price, which was estimated to be over $32 billion.
The New York Times also reported that Ms. Whitman plans to "put money into sales technology for things like fast product quotes, customer tracking and servicing, and bill paying." Essentially, the company's success and survival will be contingent upon its conception of new products. Recently the company revealed that it was producing a series of "lightweight laptops" that will be known as "ultrabooks". HP will also release a "cloud-computing data center" using its latest server technology.
