AI PC dominates as HP woos partners to deliver ‘One HP’ vision

The biggest change in the PC market in decades has been engineered, allowing the devices to run AI-powered applications and operations locally using dedicated neural processing chips.

HP launched more than 80 AI integrated products at its Amplify partner conference, held from 17 to 19 March, while it was also shedding staff and repositioning its manufacturing operations for a new and more challenging world order.

CEO Enrique Lores said HP was not focused on driving AI to the cloud but on bringing it to the edge and ensuring people could run large language models (LLM) on their PCs where they would also find bonuses in privacy and security.

“Now there is more change than we have seen in a long time, more opportunity than we have seen in the past,” he said.

“We need to take advantage of all these changes to transform how we work.”

AI at the edge was an opportunity, he told partners, but the conversations he was having with customers now were about real progress.

HP’s push comes after several years of relatively subdued device buying following a surge to enable remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, with Windows 10 reaching end of support in October, upgrades are likely to accelerate again with the AI PC firmly in the frame.

Lores outlined a plan dubbed “One HP” to focus on the company’s full portfolio and the full customer experience, not just products. For partners, that meant selling more across the whole HP portfolio while customers who spend more with the vendor would also be rewarded.

“This also means we will be changing how we go to market,” Lores explained. “Winning category by category is not enough, we need to ensure we win as a full portfolio.”

In that cause, HP increased partner incentives through what it calls a “superpower booster” to its Amplify partner programme to reward portfolio-wide sales. The initiative rewards commercial, distribution and retail partners.

The One HP strategy is further supported by the company’s Workforce Experience Platform which spans HP’s ecosystem to maximise the end user experience and boost productivity.

Tools such as HP’s AI Studio could also help companies make use of generic models and domain models, tuned using the user’s own enterprise data.

“AI studio is a great opportunity for all of you to expand your business,” Lores told partners.

“Customers and clients will need help to build these models. There is a huge business opportunity to help our customers to build these models and enable the future of work.”

This would start on the commercial side but would also happen on the consumer side because homes were now offices as well.

HP also planned to expand its subscription model to make its technologies more accessible.

In February, HP announced it was cutting up to 2,000 jobs to save an additional US$300 million on top of plans already announced to save US$1.9 billion by the end of October, its current financial year.

While HP had already been regionalising its supply chains for several years, US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports from China were prompting further diversification of its North American supplies.

“We think that we are going from a globalisation model to a regionalisation model where products will be built regionally, will be distributed digitally and eventually will also be designed digitally to be more focused on the needs of specific regions,” Lores said.

As HP already had factories and other facilities distributed around the world, current geopolitical changes delivered a potential competitive advantage, he said.

President of imaging and printing at HP Anneliese Olson said the print team along with HP’s PC, collaboration and Poly and services teams were all in on the “One HP mantra”.

The team was aiming to make printing easier, using AI to deliver new experiences and to simplify workflows and make them more efficient and make the experience more intuitive.

The Workforce Experience Platform featured again to help IT departments manage fleets securely and efficiently.

Finally, HP was accelerating subscriptions and services to enhance convenience, value and deliver more seamless printing with sustainable products.

One innovation was in scan to email, where AI can now scan, summarise and name the file with searchable metadata instead of the generic “scan” file name usually applied.

Workflows are also being applied to help bridge the physical and digital aspects of printing to help streamline the process and to support collaboration.

The security of the fleet had also been boosted to harden them against quantum attacks, the risk that quantum computers might be used to attack traditional cryptography.

Guided redaction, enabled by AI and machine learning, helps move information from physical to digital and digital to physical while erasing sensitive personal information automatically with review.

HP is the PC market leader in the US but is second to Lenovo globally with 21.6 per cent share to Lenovo’s 25.5 per cent, according to Gartner.

Rob O’Neill attended HP Amplify in Nashville as a guest of HP.