UPDATED 07:35 EDT / OCTOBER 15 2013

HP CEO Signals Wintel Alliance May Be in Its Final Days

Hewlett Packard is no longer playing by Intel and Microsoft’s rules, CEO Meg Whitman told analysts at a meeting this week. Citing the rapid decline of the traditional PC market, the executive said that her company faces pressure to break out of the Wintel ecosystem and embrace new platforms, namely Android and Chrome OS.

While Windows’ desktop monopoly has shown consistent decline in recent years, Google’s operating systems are seeing rapid growth as consumers abandon PCs in favor of more affordable mobile devices. Add to that Microsoft’s expanding hardware lineup and its acquisition of Nokia, and it’s not hard to see why HP regards the software titan as a threat to its business.

“HP’s traditional highly profitable markets face significant disruption. Wintel devices are being challenged by ARM-based devices,” Whitman remarked. “The disruptive forces are very tough and very real, and they are accelerating. We are seeing profound changes in the competitive landscape. Our competitors are expanding across the IT stack. Current partners like Intel and Microsoft are turning from partners to outright competitors.”

Speaking at the same meeting, Dion Weisler, the executive vice president of printing and personal systems at HP, noted that the Google mobile ecosystem “represents $46 billion of opportunity” for his company. He also echoed Whitman’s comments about the need to expand beyond Wintel, a plan that Hewlett Packard has been pursuing aggressively in recent months.

Underscoring this vision, the manufacturer just pulled the curtains back on the Chromebook 11, a $279 laptop that packs 16GB of storage and a dual-core Samsung Exynos 5250 processor. The debut follows the announcement of the Slate 8 Pro, an eight-inch Android tablet that offers a higher pixel count than rivaling devices from Samsung and Apple.


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