H.P. Plans Big Shift Toward Business Customers

SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett-Packard said on Thursday that it was considering spinning off its personal computer business into a separate company and was in talks to acquire Autonomy, a business software maker.

Those would be the biggest moves but by Leo Apotheker, H.P.’s chief executive, to refocus the company on business services and products. Mr. Apothecker has been trying to ramp up the company’s growth, which has been slow.

H.P. as well said it would kill off its TouchPad tablet, which was just introduced in June and was meant to compete with the iPad from Apple, and stop making mobile phones that use the webOS operating system, which H.P. picked up when it bought Palm.

The PC unit

Splitting off the PC unit would eliminate the drag of that low-margin business on H.P. as it tries to move more toward providing corporate clients with services and cloud computing — a term used to describe delivering products and services online. Before this year, Mr. Apotheker outlined a plan to grow H.P.’s tiny business software unit and expand into the cloud. That strategy challenges I.B.M and Oracle, two giants in the market.

The adjusted income of $1.10 was slightly above the expectations of Wall Street analysts. They had expected $1.09 a share and revenue of $31.19 billion, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters.

H.P.’s outlook for the fourth quarter was then below expectations. Revenue is expected to be $32.1 billion to $32.5 billion, short of the forecast from analysts of slightly more than $34 billion. Adjusted income is expected to be $1.12 to $1.16, again below the $1.31 predicted by analysts.

Mr. Apotheker, who joined H.P. last year, is trying to revitalize the company afterwards a series of disappointing quarters. Sales in a number of core businesses are weak because of internal missteps, shifts in the market and a slumping economy.

H.P’s computer business is struggling from an industrywide softness in demand, partly because of a shift in customer appetite for tablets. In June, the company introduced its TouchPad tablet in hope of taking market share from the iPad, nevertheless sales of TouchPads were slow, and H.P. had to cut its price 20 percent.