For The First Time In 7 Quarters, HP's Hard-Hit PC Business Grew

One of the unexpected tidbits in Hewlett Packard's quarter was revenue growth for the PC unit.

This was the first time in seven quarters that HP's PC business grew, CEO Meg Whitman told Wall Street analysts at the company's conference call.

Whitman said:

"What most people will be surprised on this earnings call is how well PSG did ... and I give a shout out to Dion Weisler and his team as they continue to execute. ...

Our multi-OS, multi- architecture, multi-form factor strategy is working well.

Revenue grew 4% over the prior year, our first quarter of growth in seven quarters. ..."

Specifically the Personal Systems Group (PSG) had revenue of $8.5 billion, most of that was thanks to sales to businesses which were up by 8%. On the downside, consumers still aren't buying as many PCs, that segment was down 3% from the year-ago quarter. Total units were up 6% with notebooks unit sales were up 5% and desktops units down 3%.

Whitman credited Weisler, the man she put in charge of PSG after she replaced Todd Bradley last summer. Bradley helped make HP one of the biggest PC makers in the world, but was also blamed for HP's struggles to get into mobile.

He was replaced in June, shortly after PSG reported a horrible quarter, where revenues dipped 20%. So while Whitman was giving Weisler a shout out, she was also underscoring her decision to make a change.

She also took a mild shot at the iPad by predicting that sales for enterprise would remain positive because people will want to replace their old PCs with new PCs, not tablets.

"While employees may want a tablet, they also need more traditional compute devices to do their real work," she said.

That said, she wasn't willing to proclaim PSG out of the woods yet. An analyst asked if PSG would post positive growth numbers for the year and she answered:

"Hard to call. This has been, over the last few years, a pretty volatile market. My experience over many years of business is that you always underestimate on the way down about how bad it's going to be and on the way up sometimes it's better than you think it's going be. "