Progress Card for Hewlett-Packard- How HP arises as Numero Uno?

HP (Hewlett-Packard), a U.S. based company that specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, storage, and networking hardware, software and services. The company mainly deals with personal computing devices, related storage devices, printers and other imaging products. It also deals with electronic test equipment and systems, medical electronic equipment and instrumentation for chemical analysis. HP is also the 5th largest software company in the world.

HP comes into existence in 1935 by William (Bill) Hewlett and David (Dave) Packard; they started their company from a small garage and gradually reached to heights. The partnership was formalized on 1939 with an investment of US $538.

The company is responsible for introducing many significant products in the electronic market like the world's first handheld scientific electronic calculator in 1972 (the HP-35), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the HP-65), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the HP-41C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator HP-28C.

Some distinctive products launched by HP doing a good business in the market are:-

• Computer Terminals - HP 2647 BASIC Graphics, HP 2648 Graphics etc.

• Desktops - HP TouchSmart PC, HP Pavilion Elite m9000 series, Compaq Presario V6000Z, HP Compaq tc4400 etc.

• Servers - ProLiant ML370 G5, Compaq ProLiant ML570, ProLiant BL260c (Released 31 March 2008) etc.

• Printers- Color LaserJet CP6015dn, LaserJet M3035xs MFP, ColorJet 9500 series, Photosmart 8750, Designjet Z6100ps etc.

• Digital Cameras - Photosmart M737, Photosmart R937, Photosmart E337

• Scanners - Scanjet 8250, Scanjet 8290 etc.

• PDAs (personal Digital Assistence) - HP-75 BASIC hand-held 1982, HP Jornada 928, iPAQ H1900 etc.

In the early days of existence, the company deals with a wide range of electronic products, but later on it started focusing only on high-quality electronic test and measurement equipments.

HP had signed a joint venture in the 1960s with Sony and the Yokogawa Electric companies in Japan to develop several high-quality products. But, unfortunately this joint venture didn't work well and HP spun off a small company, Dynec, to specialize in digital equipment. Finally, HP entered the computer market in 1966 with the HP 2100 / HP 1000 series of minicomputers. The same system architecture with accumulator-based design, with registers arranged still used today with some changes, but the basic architecture is the same.

In the 1990s, HP expanded their computer product line, which initially had been targeted at university, research, and business centres, to reach consumers. In late 90s, it formed an hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell companies products online.

In 2002, HP signed a merger deal with Compaq Computer Corporation, an American personal computer company and became a major player in desktops, laptops, and servers for many different markets.

Hewlett-Packard shows US $91.7 billion in annual revenue in 2006, while in 2007 the revenue was $104 billion and it become the first IT Company in history to report revenues exceeding $100 billion. The states above said are evidence for the gradual expansion of the company with time.

The company very well perches flag over its contender companies like Dell (U.S. based company), Lenovo (China's largest company), Acer (Taiwanese multinational electronics company), and Toshiba (a Japanese electronics company).