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Chronicles

The story behind the story

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HP's split into two publicly traded companies called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. expected to be completed by November 2015

HP To Separate Into Two New Industry-Leading Public Companies  —  Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will define the next generation of technology infrastructure …

HP

Context & Ripple Effects

The announcement caps an arc that began with the opposite move: in March 2012, HP combined its printer and PC groups into one unit in what was billed at the time as a major restructuring (that 2012 reorganization). Two years on, the company has concluded the pairing works better apart, splitting into Hewlett-Packard Enterprise for corporate hardware and services and HP Inc. for PCs and printers.

First-order effects

  • HP becomes two publicly traded companies by November 2015, with Meg Whitman running Hewlett-Packard Enterprise while serving as nonexecutive chairman of HP Inc.
  • Alongside the split news, syndicated reports note HP raised its expected layoffs by 5,000 to roughly 55,000 — the workforce cut lands across both future companies.

Second-order effects

  • Enterprise customers and channel partners now face two counterparties where there was one: procurement, contracts, and support relationships must be divided between the enterprise infrastructure seller and the PC/printer vendor during the separation window.
  • A standalone HP Inc. enters the low-margin PC and printing market without enterprise profits to lean on, just as HP's own PC-and-printer division plans were being recast from consolidation to independence — pressure that falls on pricing and cost structure rather than new products.

Third-order effects

  • If the pattern holds, large diversified tech vendors increasingly treat consumer-device scale and enterprise-infrastructure services as structurally incompatible under one roof, making targeted breakups a standard tool of portfolio management rather than a distress signal.

The trend: Diversified hardware giants are unbundling their consumer product arms from enterprise infrastructure businesses, reversing the 2012-era logic that put HP's printers and PCs together.

Related: HP · Hewlett-Packard Enterprise · HP Inc. · HP is better not together · HP's 2012 printer-PC group combination

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