HP President Alex Cho On Making Millennial-Friendly PCs And Why It's A 'Scale Year' For Device-As-A-Service

Cho On The Record

Coming off a year when HP Inc. continued to generate strong growth in its commercial PC business, the company has kicked off the new year by unveiling a number of advances in the commercial lineup at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. They include HP's first all-in-one PC featuring the Sure View integrated privacy screen, along with the company's first convertible model in its EliteBook 800 series notebooks for mainstream workers—featuring a high-brightness display that can be used outdoors. "Millennials are not just working at their desks," said Alex Cho, president of HP's personal systems business, in an interview with CRN this week at CES. Overall, younger generations of workers are "looking for technology that integrates into their life. Not just functionally, but designwise," Cho said. And HP is responding with many of its design choices in its commercial PC updates, he said.

For the year ahead at HP, "you will see continued innovations in the form factor," Cho said. "Secondly, our goal is not only to continue making the world's most secure devices, but to ensure that when they're managed as a service, they're even better." Cho said he expects HP's Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) business—which pairs device leases with advanced analytics for proactive maintenance—will have a breakout year in 2019.

What follows is an edited portion of Cho's conversation with CRN.