Good week/Bad week
We run through who's played a blinder and who's made a blunder in the channel this week
Good week
HP PSG
New HP boss Meg Whitman shocked precisely no one last week by revealing she intends to hang on to the vendor's PSG division.
It may not have come as much of a surprise, but it must have been a relief for partners - not to mention jittery shareholders.
Whitman (pictured, right), who has already -displayed an aptitude for grandiose pontifications, gave PSG some much-needed loving when she announced HP will be keeping it in the family.
"Keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders and right for employees. HP is committed to PSG and together we are stronger," said Whitman, possibly while Search for the Hero gently swelled in the background.
m-hance
Positivity is certainly flowing at the channel's latest mega-merger company after seven software specialists pooled their resources to conquer the mid-market under one senior management team.
Calyx Software, Gyrosoft, Trinity Computer Services and divisions of MentecPlus, Touchstone Group, Sys-Care and Avent Garde have joined forces to trade as m-hance. The move is designed to expand the firm's reach into vertical markets such as distribution, financing, hospitality and leisure.
But we can't help wondering where on earth the name came from. When faced with the opportunity to name a new mid-market monolith and flex its newly enhanced might, was m-hance really the top choice?
Expanding distributors
Just as we were thinking that organic expansion in the distribution space had become rarer than well-written Dan Brown novels, up stepped Westcoast, Midwich and C2000.
Westcoast announced it is leaping into the unified communications space with a new team. The Theale-based distributor expects the unit, which will focus on vendors including Aastra Telecom, Audiocodes, Microsoft Lync and HP Networking to generate £5m in growth over the next year.
Midwich also lifted the veil on a new division focused on interactive technology, while - not to be outdone - C2k launched cloud aggregator arm TDCloud.
Bad week
The HDD market
Hard disk drive (HDD) fans should prepare for the worst, after several storage manufacturers were forced to halt production in the wake of the Thailand floods.
Figures from analyst IHS iSuppli indicate the situation could lead to product shortages and price hikes, as HDD production is expected to slump by 28 per cent during the final quarter of 2011.
Storage distributor Hammer told CRN that channel HDD stocks are dwindling. Gerard Marlow, the firm's general manager for business development, said: "We will continue to see price rises [because of] the disastrous circumstances at factories in Thailand."
Apple (again)
The full scale of Steve Jobs' antipathy towards Android emerged last month, but his efforts to "destroy" the OS appear to have been in vain. The iPhone maker spent just one quarter as the world's leading smartphone manufacturer before Samsung took top spot in Q3.
The popularity of the Galaxy S series of devices, coupled with fanboys waiting for the release of the iPhone 4S, allowed the Korean vendor to ship 10 million more units than its closest rival during the quarter.
If the Apple bosses are feeling glum, they can always do what we do at ChannelWeb when we're down in the dumps and cheer themselves up by scoffing an ice cream sandwich. Oh, wait a sec...
RM
After falling on hard times, RM has become a sort of rag and bone man for the channel - and a poor one at that.
The beleaguered education supplier has already hawked its US hardware business, Compu-trac, for £3m, representing a hefty £2m loss on the price it paid for the interactive classroom technology maker in 2008.
Other items it has loaded onto its horse and cart include classroom furniture specialist ISIS, DACTA and a number of minority shareholdings that do not operate under the RM brand.