HP Canada has lost some share of the desktop market. But don’t blame the merger for that, said IDC Canada. Blame Dell.
Initial concerns about the post-merger product support roadmap did frighten some enterprise customers away from HP Canada, said Eddie Chan, hardware research analyst for IDC Canada. The company handled those concerns well, though, unveiling their strategy quite quickly and calming any existing customer uneasiness.
The combined share of the desktop space for HP and Compaq before the merger stood at 20.2 per cent. It dropped about a percentage point after the merger, Chan said. But those numbers, he argued, do not paint an accurate picture.
“”They’ve actually gained momentum in the current quarter, so the numbers may not be indicative of their return to normal,”” he said.
Chan also argued that Dell has been a major reason for the market share drop for HP Compaq. Taking Dell performance of late into consideration, this is not at all surprising, he said — it’s affecting all desktop vendors.
Customer Close-Up: Dave Wilson, the Gatineau, Que.-based president of the Canadian Association of Compaq Users (CANCU), said that the merger has been a positive story for the industry, and he has not been privy to any complaints or fallout from his organization’s members.
“”From CANCU’s perspective, we’re quite pleased. I think that a lot of the members feel that they’re quite comfortable with HP as a vendor, as they have a closer alignment with our group to the way that Digital operated originally than Compaq, and we sort of feel at home in that environment,”” he said. “”We’re quite happy.””
According to Wilson, the anguish that could have occurred over losing some of Compaq’s product line was eased with good management on HP’s part.
“”The press often referred to this as a takeover, but it certainly wasn’t a purge.””
Wilson noted that his group’s members say HP is doing a good job of putting the best-of-breed products from both companies together for a good product line.
Tsaparis says: “”We extensively poll our customers on formal and informal processes in terms of their levels of satisfaction, and it’s something that’s part of our everyday management processes within HP,”” he says. The company this year introduced a toll-free number for the consumer segment with an interactive voice recognition system intended to ease the customer support process.
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