HP Inc., has opened its second Australian Customer Welcome Centre (CWC) in the heart of the Sydney CBD at 20 Martin Place – although access is by invitation only for its 400+ channel partners and thousands of enterprise clients.
It follows the highly successful Melbourne Experience Centre (iTWire article here) opened last year. Since then, 2,500 customers and partners have visited it, and 950 meetings and events have been held there, directly contributing to tens of millions of dollars of new business.
iTWire joined the opening media briefing today, and the HP big guns were all there, Dion Weisler, President & Chief Executive Officer, Richard Bailey, President, Asia Pacific and Japan Region, and Robert Mesaros Managing Director of HP South Pacific (Australia and New Zealand) as well as its local category and line managers.
The Sydney centre has a large boardroom, a smaller meeting room and catering area, and masses of flexible space that will allow it to be used as a meetings and events centre.
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A complete line-up of its Elite commercial notebook, hybrids, desktops, smartphone, printers, thin clients and special purpose devices are on display. Interestingly it also has the Spectre end of the consumer products (that sit above Envy and Pavilion consumer brands) as these are finding their way into enterprise use.
I was interested in the “Office/desktop of the future” featuring the new Windows 10 Mobile (W10M) Elite x3 smartphone launched in Australia last week (iTWire article here) powering screens and devices like its lap dock.
I quizzed Weisler on the company’s commercial mobility strategy, an area that he says is one of three key focuses for HP. “Commercial and consumer lives are merging into one and mobility is a mega trend. You are going to see more and more tasks on the one device,” he said.
He said that today’s computing devices comprised smartphone at one end of the scale to workstations at the other. The scale was about usability and the ability to select the right tool for the job. “You may be happy to read and reply to emails on a smartphone, you need a desktop to pen War and Peace, and a workstation for heavy computing,” he said.
The scale is essentially about screen size – smartphone, phablets (6”), mini-tablets at 8”, tablets at 10”, hybrids at 12”, then computers with screens from 23” to 34” or more. “The x3 is HP's first attempt at a computer in a pocket, and we think it will overlap, with the right dock, to the desktop end. Our goal is to get pocket-sized devices that will do everything.”
Weisler was not specifically talking about an ARM-based smartphone and would not be drawn on whether such devices would have x86 chips in them one day.
He was also bullish about two other areas of growth for the new HP that, “Is a 50-year old start-up, and one year old,” referring to its separation from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). He spoke of the actions of the past 12 months.
- More new, innovative and exciting products in the strongest portfolio he has ever seen
- HP had regained market leadership and market share globally for the past three-quarters
- Our motto “Keep reinventing” has focused us on what the market wants
- The acquisition of Samsung opens a new A3 and managed print market – HP currently has <4% of this segment
- Five commercial 3D printers have been sold with the first going in at BMW marking the beginning of a US$12 trillion-dollar market
- Its high-end graphics printer market (“Printers larger than this boardroom”) were disrupting the printing industry
Weisler spoke of 3D. We are disruptors. We don’t do consumer 3D printers but focus on commercial applications where our technology is used for prototyping to full scale, short-run production. We are already at the scale where it is better and cheaper to use HP’s 3D printing for up to 55,000 runs than tool up or get injection moulds etc. He quipped that already 50% of the parts to make its 3D printers are made by its 3D printers and will reach 85% in the future.
HP’s aim is to democratise manufacturing by moving it closer to the customer removing the need to ship around the world and the range of goods that can use HP’s patented technology are enormous. “Not just your custom Lego Block,” he said.
Mesaros said that Australia was a mature market and was a rapid adopter of mid-high end solutions that needed a partnership between HP and its channel partners to deliver. He said that HP had surprised the industry with “partners and customers falling in love again with the new company and its innovative products.”
Comment
I have attended many PR briefings and product launches for the new “HP” over the past 12 months and without exception I have noticed a spring in the staff’s step and an absolute commitment to being best. As Weisler said, “Our strategy is simple – run faster than our competitors, innovate more and execute better.”
This new CWC is for enterprise clients because HP is well represented in the consumer space by mass market retailers and also Microsoft’s Pit Street Mall.
The message is simple – look at the new HP!
Some images are below.
Big format printers
Big format gaming - Omen series
Screns and desktops
Notebooks and Hybrids
Printers