Anders and Forbes re Bradley

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              George Anders   Consultant, Forbes

               

6/18/2013 @ 9:42AM PDT

 HP Moves Bradley Aside, Taps Weisler To Run Consumer Unit

Hewlett-Packard has a new head of its market-leading printing and personal systems business:Dion Weisler. He’s a former Lenovo executive currently working for HP in Asia. As for Todd Bradley, the long-time head of HP’s printing and personal system business, he remains in HP’s executive council, but won’t control nearly as much revenue.

In announcing the management shuffle, HP’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, hinted that she is looking for better operating performance from the big PPS group. She referred to Weisler “one of our very best executives,” adding that “his background is perfect, given the challenges that we face in the marketplace.”

When HP last month reported its results for the quarter ended April 30, the company showed a 1% decline in printing revenue and a 20% drop in personal-system revenue. The double-digit slippage reflected the waning appeal of PCs and notebooks as consumers increasingly gravitate toward tablets and smartphones. Overall operating earnings for printing and personal systems declined just 10%, to $1.2 billion, as Bradley and his team largely kept costs in line with waning demand.

But HP didn’t make as much progress as some might have wanted in building up its own mobility-based offerings. For the quarter, HP showed just a 17% growth rate in revenue, to $242 million, for  “other” products in printing and personal systems. That’s the category in which tablets and other mobility products are grouped.

If HP can’t improve on that growth rate, it would take 16 years for its mobile devices and other products to achieve the $3.1 billion in quarterly revenue currently posted by desktop computers. Whitman and the board probably aren’t that patient.

The new head of HP’s printing and personal systems group, Weisler, joined HP in January 2012. He previously was chief operating officer of Lenovo’s product and digital mobile internet digital home groups. Raised in Australia, Weisler earlier had worked at Acer for 11 years. Lenovo and Acer are two of HP’s leading competitors in the personal-computer and notebook markets.

Bradley will move to a new job as executive vice president for strategic growth initiatives. The company said he will focus on enhancing HP’s business in China and extending channel partnership relationships around the world. He also will work with Whitman on trying to partner with early stage companies that can aid HP’s growth.

Bradley had joined HP in 2005, after having been chief executive officer of Palm. He started as head of the personal systems business — a high-volume, low-margin, highly competitive business that is one of HP’s main presences in the consumer market. Last year, Bradley also took on oversight of HP’s other main consumer-facing business: printing.

At the peak of his influence, Bradley ran businesses with $65 billion in annual revenue. That’s  slightly more than half of HP’s overall revenue.