HP confirms plans of Windows 8 tablets

Hewlett-Packard (HP) will restart its tablet production with the new Microsoft Windows 8 operating system.

Last year due to poor sales of touchpad WebOS tablet, HP had to abandon its production. Meg Whitman, chief executive said that resuming production is only a strategic move to make profit on huge sales of tablet this year. HP is also thinking of merging its printing and PC computer business but only among Southeast Asian’s operating units in next three months. According to Ms Whitman merging with a combined business value of US$65 billion will help with HP’s business efficiency by centralizing sales and marketing teams, unifying products and reducing logistics costs.

The new Windows 8 tablet will be based on cloud technology, which will enable the user to share and store content online between different devices. For HP ultrabooks will be a very important product this year.

HP is considering building a $100-million printer factory in Asia-Pacific region with Thailand being an option.

Bryan Ma, an associate vice-president at global research firm IDC, believes Asean’s PC export will rise to 9% to 19 million units this year.

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