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The TouchPad was so retail focused. Did you learn a lot from that and as a result say: Look we are not going to go the consumer route. We are going to lead with our strength, with our sales force and the business market where we have built a strong, loyal channel?
I think a lot of this has to do with our ability to work with the channel to drive penetration of these products. I think the benefit we get from a well-educated channel sales force is pretty significant.
I am not going to go into any of the retail stuff. I mean you can see us in some of the big outlet superstores, but that is probably the extent of it.
In your recent meetings with partners, was there anything that they gave you in terms of feedback that surprised you?
First, I talk to our partners all the time. If there was something that was surprising, they would call me. I wouldn't say surprising. I really responded, and we responded aggressively to this need to seed products early, which is why we are doing the road show.
I think we are adaptive, and we learn as a company. I think these things are really important changes that we need to make.
A lot of partners are still demoralized and haven't recovered from the missteps under former CEO Leo Apotheker. Talk about that.
We are spending a lot of time with people to regain their confidence and show our commitment. I think our entire product lineup -- from printers to workstations to PCs to tablets -- as we get into the fall is going to show how committed we are to the space, how committed HP is to our business, and, yeah, I think there is still some work we need to do to regain their confidence. That is why we are charging down this path. We have never done anything like this. This is a pretty significant commitment for us to take our entire product lineup, just the logistics of taking our entire product lineup to 20 cities is significant.
As someone who was at Palm and knows mobility better than anybody, how important is this business tablet to the future of HP?
First off, I think people are understanding what the usage models are. And, I think tablets and notebooks all have critical places in the enterprise and small business environment. I think it is obviously important, obviously critical as it relates to providing that suite of products that are important to our customers. But be it tablet or Convertible or some of next generation of products -- All In Ones -- they are all important.
With the merger of the Personal Systems and Printing businesses, what is the opportunity for partners?
I think the biggest growth is coming out of the similarity of the programs and people that we have brought to this effort. Between [Scott] Dunsire [vice president and general manager of PPS U.S. channel sales] and [Mike] Parrottino [vice president, US SMB channel sales] we have got two of the best channel leaders in the country. So, we have got very specific skills from that perspective and a very specific focus. I think the similarity in programs and the simplicity and partners' ability to [more simply] deal with us [going forward] is going to be a big deal.
NEXT: Are Tablets Eating Into Notebook Sales?
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