Tech giant Hewlett Packard reported a 13- per-cent drop in first quarter profits Wednesday that reflected a decline in almost all its major business areas, dpa reported.
The Silicon Valley pioneer said it earned 1.9 billion dollars, or 75 cents a share, compared with a profit of 2.1 billion dollars, or 80 cents a share, during the same period a year ago. Revenue rose 1 per cent to 28.8 billion dollars from 28.5 billion dollars in the prior year's first quarter.
HP said that it experienced weakness in all divisions except for its services business where it benefited from its acquisition of EDS. But revenue at its personal systems unit dropped 19 per cent to 8.8 billion dollars as PC shipments slipped 4 per cent from a year ago. Even sales of notebooks PCs, which had risen almost 40 per cent per quarter over the last two years, suffered a 13-per-cent sales decline.
HP's cash cow, imaging and printing, recorded a 19-per-cent drop in sales to 6 billion dollars, while software revenue sank 7 per cent to 878 million dollars.
Revenue grew 11 per cent in the Americas to 12.4 billion dollars, but it fell 3 per cent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to 12 billion dollars. The biggest geographical hit came in the Asia Pacific region where revenue plunged 11 per cent to 4.4 billion dollars.