HP Personal Systems President Coughlin On Why Competitors Have 'Sub-Par' Security And Why Apple Is Ceding Ground In Premium

Coughlin On The Record

Channel partners working with HP Inc. have plenty to be excited about in 2018 when it comes to the PC business, according to HP Personal Systems President Ron Coughlin. HP has seen double-digit revenue growth in its personal systems business for each of the past four quarters. And "we see strong momentum" exiting 2017 and heading into this year, Coughlin said in an interview with CRN at CES 2018 in Las Vegas, where HP unveiled several new PC products. Fueling the PC growth is top-notch design that is rivaling that of competitors such as Apple, along with a focus on security that is second to none, Coughlin said. "We listen to our customers, we listen to what they want, we listen to their unmet needs. And we turn those into products," he said.

Coughlin spoke with CRN on a range of topics including partner opportunities around Device-as-a-Service and premium devices, the Spectre and Meltdown processor vulnerabilities, and rivaling Apple at customer satisfaction. What follows is a portion of the conversation.