HP print and PC boss to kick on as UK integration wraps up

Paul Hunter upbeat on market growth and asserts vendor prides itself on "never letting inventory get out of line"

HP has claimed partners are benefiting from the recently completed merger of its PC and print divisions and expressed its pride in "never letting inventory in the channel get out of line".

The vendor giant's leading UK executives have also bitten back at the increasingly gloomy predictions punted around by market watchers, claiming "the PC market is more resilient than analysts give it credit for".

In March, HP announced it was to merge its Imaging and Printing and Personal Systems divisions to create the Printers and Personal Systems (PPS) unit. Paul Hunter, UK vice president of PPS, told ChannelWeb that integration at UK level is now wrapped up.

"We spent three months working very hard on it and have been executing on it with as much thoroughness as possible," he said. "As of Monday of this week we have all our teams in place. We will announce them to the market in three weeks' time."

Hunter (pictured) claimed that partners will benefit from unity in account management and channel reward programmes, pointing out that "virtually all partners take both parts of the portfolio". He said a number of end-user deals through the channel are now being turned around in as little as 48 hours and under.

"We have to improve our processes, our way of doing business. [It is about] being simpler, being easier to deal with," he added.

The PPS chief also refuted suggestions the PC market is in dire straits at the moment, and asserted that his firm is not experiencing the inventory build-ups and declining average selling prices that other vendors are reportedly enduring.

"We do not see it growing like it was five years ago, but we do not see it declining either. The PC market is more resilient than analysts give it credit for," he said.

"We are absolutely not seeing a build-up of our inventory. It is one of the things we have done quite predictably and we have prided ourselves on managing inventory in the channel; it has never got out of line, and never got too old."