Blended Reality Technologies across PC and Print will break down the Barriers

Rajiv Srivastava, Vice President & General Manager, PPS, HP India in an exclusive interview to Dataquest talks about the performance of HP’s PC and Print offerings in India and the way forward.

If you look at FY 15- what’s your assessment?

We have achieved comprehensive leadership in both PCs and Print in FY15. We have been leaders in the consumer as well as enterprise segment with the innovative products we introduced in FY15. The HP Printing and Personal Systems Group will continue to focus on delivering the best value to our customers and partners through innovative technology, solutions and services.

HP pushed the envelope in delivering the best user-experience by giving our new business devices more innovative, stylish designs but with the same enterprise-class level of security, manageability and robustness that businesses require, such as the HP EliteBook Folio 1020 G1 which is the thinnest and lightest business-class notebook in the market. We’re singularly focused on empowering consumers as well as enterprises to create, interact and inspire like never before. We achieve this with technology that delivers the best experience at home, at work, and on the go. All of our products, solutions and services are underpinned by a strong commitment to innovate that benefits the end user, through greater productivity, ease of use or allowing them to create in ways that they hadn’t previously been able to. To help businesses mobilize their workflows efficiently, we introduced five new tablets for vertical industry applications built for mobile workforce in the education, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail verticals, with optional accessories like a stylus, portable keyboard base, slipcase and charging cart.

The market is adapting to new form factors which are augmenting the way people consume traditional IT. HP offers multiple operating systems on our devices to allow consumers to choose an environment or ecosystem that they are most comfortable with . We have also strengthened our PC portfolio which includes a variety of desktops, notebooks, workstations, convertibles, hybrids, AiOs and tablets. The youth segment continues to drive steady growth for consumer notebook PCs and tablets. Seeing the trend, we recently partnered with Bang and Olufsen for our audio technology for our consumer notebooks and recently announced the HP Omen – our gaming device. For HP, consumers are at the focal point for all our products.

Any market share data?

We have been market leaders in PC segment for over six quarters now and we have maintained our leadership in Printing since long. According to IDC Worldwide Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals (HCP) Tracker (2015Q1), HP is no. 1 in Inkjet HCP with 53% share and no. 1 in Laser HCP with 41% share in India in 2015Q1. HP is also no. 1 in PC overall with 26% share in India in 2015Q1, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, 2015Q1. HP has re-invented printing from inside out with its new LaserJet line-up in 2015 with a new JetIntelligence technology that enables much faster startup time, up to 53% less energy and 33% more prints per cartridge. These new HP LaserJets are 40% smaller and come in clean, white color schemes with subtle texture variations to create a light, inviting and approachable finish. Coupled with a sense of proportion, they fit seamlessly into the modern office environment.

For more than 30 years, HP has been building a strong inkjet innovation portfolio that can address customers’ needs across segments. HP successfully incorporated its industrial-scale PageWide technology – a proven, advanced commercial printing technology used in HP Inkjet Web Presses  – into a desktop printer. The  HP OfficeJet Pro X series achieved breakthrough speed at up to 70 pages per minute, delivering high-quality printing at up to twice the speed and half the cost compared to the laser printers. HP further scaled its PageWide technology with the HP OfficeJet Enterprise X MFPs by adding full enterprise functionalities including scan-optimized digitization features and support for enterprise software and solutions. HP is also extending its PageWide technology to large-format printing, disrupting the production printing market. The new HP PageWide XL Printers offer the fastest large-format production printing available in color and black-and-white.  The new printers do the job of two printers in one single device, providing monochrome and color prints at breakthrough speeds up to 60 percent faster than the fastest monochrome light-emitting diode (LED) printer.

Any channel update?

HP has the biggest skilled and enabled channel network in India that delivers all our products and services in metro cities as well as smaller markets. We will continue to delight our partners through transparent channel profitability schemes and programs, continuous inventory of products and the largest after sales and services support network.

On Innovation?

2016 will witness HP focusing on innovation on a much larger scale, we are innovating for emerging economies like India -

• Blended Reality Ecosystem: HP is introducing a new ecosystem of technologies that will break down the barriers between the digital and physical worlds and set the pace for future innovation. We believe that under this new Blended Reality ecosystem, we will be positioned to set the pace for change in the 3D printing and computing segments and will open up new commercial opportunities.
• HP Multi Jet Fusion: Disruptive 3D Print technology is poised to reshape the 3D Print market. HP Multi Jet Fusion technology covers a wide range of part categories with high functionality and is targeted to be available to manufacturing companies, medium and large in-house model shops and service bureaus. We want this solution to be available to everyone from large corporations to a single individual at an accessible price point. We are working to provide individual units to enterprise clients and service bureaus, while providing consumers with affordable access to our solution through service bureaus.

Can you talk about some leading market trends?

Over past few years, we have observed the changing dynamics in both PCs and Printing market and the CIO’s have three major objectives:

Increase simplicity, reduce complexity - which means that the operating environment has to be made as simplified and consistent as possible. Inter-operability and flexibility are the key operative principles that are expected to allow effortless access to content, anytime, anywhere and from any device.

Cost optimization – the requirement to do more with less. So technology and delivery models that enable higher performance and increased productivity at lower operating costs. For consumers it means affordable products that are high on style with no compromise

Everything as a Service or EaaS is the need of the hour as consumers as well as enterprises demand personalized services for a holistic experience. Embedded within this is the obvious shift from a capex towards an opex based model.

Keeping in mind the market scenario, we innovate to deliver on the customer expectations and provide value, growth, affordable quality and an unrivalled experience to our customers.

In both Commercial and Consumer Print, we continue to hold a very strong lead. Our innovative portfolio powered by PageWide and JetIntelligence, along with our industry-leading Managed Print Services, will continue to strengthen customers’ preference to choose HP. In Consumer, we are confident we can further strengthen our appeal by infusing beauty, elegance, simplicity and fun accents of pop colors into our new DeskJet Ink Advantage line-up.

We also lead the market in both Commercial and Consumer PC. In Commercial PC, we are well positioned to push ahead with Device as a Service, which makes PC acquisition, setup and maintenance costs more predictable annually, and a strong Mobility line-up that offers a modular approach to address customers’ most critical needs (instead of locking customers into specific OS or retrofitting consumer products to work for enterprises). In Consumer PC, we will introduce the new Pavilion line-up – where intelligent design meets engineering precision - to deliver new experiences that our customers have never encountered before. The HP Pavilion x2 is designed for productivity and optimized for entertainment. The latchless magnetic connector easily attaches the keyboard for a traditional notebook experience and easily detaches to transform the device into a tablet for on the go, stand mode for watching movies and tent mode for playing games.

Our new category for Blended Reality technologies across PC and Print will break down the barriers of technology and significantly improve users’ interactions and experiences. This will set the groundwork for a dynamic future roadmap of innovation. And it will empower our customers across all segments (consumers, SMBs, enterprises) to create, interact and inspire like never before.

How do you see FY 16 panning out?

We will continue to achieve profitable growth in all the product categories on the pillars of experience and innovation. We will continue to provide our customers as well as our partners the most differentiated experience.

We see a huge opportunity with the government’s Digital India campaign. We will continue to contribute to the Government campaigns which will make technology access easier for every citizen. We believe that it is a big opportunity for us to provide solutions that are agile, efficient and productive. There is also an opportunity to make processes more efficient by mobilizing workflows and HP can help the government drive this with our solutions that address mobility use cases in vertical industries with the right devices, software, and services approach.