HP’s fortunes are largely tied to the ebb and flow of the PC market, where supply chain disruption and economic uncertainty took a post-pandemic toll on the entire industry.
After weathering a flat 2024, the company saw revenues pick up last year, as enterprises began investing in AI-capable workstations and moved forward with Windows 11 device upgrades.
Despite tariffs and supply chain concerns, AI PCs gained traction with HP customers. Premium units accounted for nearly one-third of the company’s shipments during the final quarter of its 2025 fiscal year, HP CEO Enrique Lores said during a November earnings call.
The ongoing Windows refresh also helped drive 6% year-over-year growth in HP’s Personal Systems division, which accounted for more than two-thirds of the company’s $55.3 billion in revenue last year.
Global PC shipments remained strong through the end of last year, increasing more than 9% year over year in Q4, according to a Gartner analysis published Tuesday. However, ominous signs of an impending memory chip shortage emerged in December, as massive hyperscaler AI infrastructure investments continued.
There are other factors at play, according to Marcos Razon, SVP and division president of HP Managed Solutions.
“The problem is that our PCs, computing devices and even our printers use memory,” Razon told Channel Dive. “Cars are getting more intelligent, our home devices are getting more intelligent, and they are requiring more memory and more telemetric capability so you can control them with the apps with your phone.”
Razon isn’t overly concerned. The PC business has periodically had to contend with supply chain disruptions and component shortages. “Hiccups have happened before and we have learned to live with them — it’s a normal situation in this industry,” Razon said.
HP, which conducts around 80% of its business through channel partners, is banking on its commercial customers shifting to an IT services model for their PC fleets, printers and collaboration tools.
“We see a high potential in the market for managed services,” Razon said.
When customers purchase PCs, they’re investing in assets that they can depreciate over four or five years, during which vendors roll out improved models and IT capabilities evolve. In just a year or two, the fleet’s actual value is negligible.
“There’s not much value in keeping an asset that’s real value is zero,” Razon said. “Instead, you can use a service and get a refresh every two or three years.”
In HP’s print division, which Razon characterized as a mature practice, HP offers several options to its partners: hardware, hardware and supplies, and hardware and supplies plus a service component. Personal Systems include managed device services for laptops, PCs and other workstation components.
“Managed device services will be the industry’s growth engine for the next couple of years,” Razon said.
The third pillar of the managed services strategy grew out of HP’s 2022 acquisition of hybrid work solutions provider Poly. The deal added audiovisual hardware and software to the company’s product portfolio.
“Why would a company want to own the cameras, microphones and speakers inside of a meeting room when it can be managed for them? That business is just in its infancy right now,” said Razon.
As enterprises seek to simplify procurement, consolidate IT assets and direct tech talent toward higher value projects, HP is expanding its services through its Workforce Experience Platform. Earlier this month, the company added firmware recovery for unbootable systems, unified printer controls and collaboration space analytics to the IT asset management suite, which will be available on the AWS Cloud Marketplace this year.
“We are moving from a reactive to a proactive service model,” said Razon.
