HP has added to the growing chorus of suppliers anticipating a
general market rebound in 2010, predicting that it will grow faster
than the industry average.
At its
Securities Analyst Meeting in the US, Mark Hurd, CEO talked up
HP's wide-ranging portfolio of products and services and pointed
toward its global reach as reasons for shareholders to be
sanguine.
"We expect the IT industry to return to growth in 2010 and
believe that HP will outpace the market," he said.
"Our broad product and services portfolio and global scale give
HP a clear competitive advantage. As a result, we see tremendous
opportunity to grow our business and earnings while delivering
value to our customers," he added.
For this fiscal year ended 31 October, HP expects revenues to
grow 3% to $117bn, and while cost savings from EDS will continue it
will remain on the lookout for further acquisitions.
The printer market, one of HP's major revenue and profit
generators has been in the doldrums for most of this year as
customers make do with existing fleets, while PC sales have
declined in all markets bar consumer notebooks.
Earlier this week Gartner said the worst of the recession was
over for the PC market as it upgraded 2009 forecasts in
anticipation of growth in Q4, largely on the back of positive
shipments in China, the US and emerging markets.
The analyst expects worldwide unit growth of 12.6% in 2010 as
consumer demand for mobile PCs continues and corporate customers
start refreshing ageing hardware, something that Dell also expects
to happen.
Intel, a strong indicator for the health of the PC market has
already called time on the recession, a point mirrored by some
senior execs in the IT channel.
The positive signs that have recently emerged in the US
financial sector will spread to the rest of the economy Cisco CEO
John Chambers predicted this week.
A version of this story originally appeared on
Microscope.