HP to combine its PC and printer divisions, report says

HP will make its Printing and Imaging Group a part of its Personal Systems Group, sources told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday

Hewlett-Packard Co. is to combine its PC and printer divisions into a single business unit, a move that will see Vyomesh "VJ" Joshi, the longtime head of HP's printer division, leave the company, according to a report published Tuesday.

HP plans to announce the move later today, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal's All Things D blog, which cited unnamed sources. An HP spokesman said the company declined to comment on the report.

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It would be the first sweeping change at HP since former eBay chief Meg Whitman took over as CEO last September. Whitman was brought in to right HP's ship after the company replaced two CEOs in a little over a year and appeared to lose its direction.

HP's Personal Systems Group, which makes its PCs and laptops, is the biggest division at the company, puling in $8.9 billion in revenue last quarter. The Imaging and Printing Group, traditionally one of its most profitable groups, brought in $6.3 billion last quarter. Together, the two groups account for about half of HP's total sales.

Under Tuesday's reorganization, HP's Imaging and Printing Group will be subsumed by its Personal Systems Group, and the combined division will be led by Todd Bradley, the executive vice president who today runs the Personal Systems Group, All Things D reported.

Joshi, who has been at HP since 1980, will leave the company, the paper reported.

Former CEO Leo Apotheker announced a plan last August under which HP might sell or spin off its PC division. It was a controversial move in part because of the uncertainty it created for HP customers, and Whitman was quick to announce after she came on board that HP would keep the PC group after all.

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HP pardoned PC biz, but WebOS is still on death row

HP pardoned PC biz, but WebOS is still on death rowJust a day after HP announced that it wouldn't be spinning off its PC division, with its new CEO Meg Whitman citing "together we are stronger", the same feeling does not extend to WebOS. British newspaper The Guardian reports on Friday that the company plans to shut down the division and more than 500 jobs could be cut.

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HP acquired the rights to WebOS through its acquisition of Palm in April 2010. The software was meant to power HP's line of Palm smartphones and the TouchPad, but following the scrapping of both lines in August, the future of WebOS was uncertain.

Both the ditching of the PC division and the end of WebOS were the swan song of ousted CEO Leo Apotheker. The appointment of Whitman led some to believe that there may be some chance that Apotheker's moves would be reversed. The surprising success of the TouchPad at $99 also added to the chance that WebOS may still have a chance.

Top-level executives in the WebOS division have been fleeing the company, The Guardian notes, with the general consensus of the department being that it would be closing down by the end of the year. HP has apparently also attempted to find a suitor, but there appears to be no interest in the mobile operating system.

This could be due to the fact that both Android and iOS have become so dominant in the mobile space: the two platforms control a large majority of the market, with RIM's BlackBerry stumbling and Microsoft's Windows Phone platform unable to gain traction in the market. WebOS would likely struggle to make any appreciable dent in the dominance of Apple and Google in the space.

HP didn't respond to our requests for comment on the status of WebOS were as of press time.