Hewlett – Packard Company which is generally referred to as HP is a technology corporation with its headquarters in California USA, Palo Alto to be precise. HP’s United States offices are located at the former old Compaq campus in unincorporated Harris County, Texas; its Latin America offices are located in Miami – Dade County, Florida. Its Europe offices are located in Geneva and its Asia – Pacific offices in Singapore.
HP is the largest technology worldwide and functions in practically every country. The company concentrates on creating and developing computing storage, software and services and networking hardware. HP’s man product line includes the following:
- Enterprise servers
- Personal computing devices
- Related storage devices
- A diverse range of printers and other imaging products
Other Product lines by HP are
- Electronic test equipment and systems
- Medical electronic equipment
- Solid state components and instrumentation used for chemical analysis which in 1999 was seen as Agilent Technologies
HP products are also marketed to small to medium size enterprises and businesses, households, through distribution, on line consumer electronics and office supply retailers, major technology vendors and software partners.
In 2006 HP’s annual revenue was US $91.7 billion which made it the world’s largest technology vendor in terms of sales, ahead of IBM which posted US$91.4 billion in revenues for the same year. 2004 revenue was $104 billion, this figure caused them to create history as the first IT company to exceed $100 billion in revenues. Four years later in 2008 HP bought EDS making a combination called HP – EDS which increased its revenues to US$118.4 billion. In 2009 HP received a Fortune 500 ranking of 9 and still retained its position as the largest technology company in the world.
HP has also surpassed their rivals Dell in being the largest seller of personal computers worldwide. HP got almost 3.9% market share lead over Dell at the end of 2007. HP is also the only American PC focused computer companies that traded publicly under the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).