The company can lay off 25–30 thousand people

One of the world's largest manufacturers of personal computers and office equipment, Hewlett-Packard, is considering the possibility of cutting 25-30 thousand jobs amid weakening demand for computers and services. The company expects that this move will allow it to cut costs by several billion.

As reported by The New York Times, citing informed sources, the upcoming cuts at HP will be announced next week on Wednesday, when the company is due to report second-quarter results. The company's leadership, led by Meg Whitman, who took over as CEO last September, is "committed to building a new company" and deep cuts are part of that plan, sources said. It is expected that the cuts will reduce costs, and the savings - several billion - can be used to improve the efficiency of trading technologies and develop new products.

Experts note that, being the leader in sales of personal computers, HP is too slow to adapt to new consumer demands and is now beginning to give way to manufacturers of tablets, smartphones and developers of cloud technologies. At the end of 2011, HP's revenue amounted to $127 billion, but its net profit was only $7.1 billion. Since the beginning of this year, the company's share price has fallen by 14%. Given these problems, HP management in March announced a major reorganization, including the consolidation of its personal computer and printer divisions, as well as the development of new products and services. After this, the company has already announced the upcoming release of a series of ultrabooks, which, as stated, should compete with Apple products. In addition, the company will soon introduce a new cloud technology center based on the latest HP servers.

Part of the reorganization includes job cuts. The total number of cuts at HP, according to sources cited by The New York Times, could reach 10% of the entire workforce of the company, which employs 324 thousand people. It is expected that the cuts will not affect divisions in China, which is one of the fastest growing regions for HP. Several thousand employees will be asked to retire early.

HP shares on the New York Stock Exchange reacted to information about the upcoming reduction with a slight increase of 0.14%, which, compared to a decrease of 6% since the beginning of the week, may indicate that investors positively assess HP's anti-crisis measures.

Alena Miklashevskaya

Hewlett-Packard begins massive cleanup