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Hewlett-Packard sees Asia as star performer

Hewlett-Packard Co, which stunned Wall Street last week by missing its profit targets, said on Tuesday it expects the Asia-Pacific region to account for at least 20 per cent of its global sales within three years.

The current share is 15 per cent but Asia-Pacific is the computer maker's fastest-growing region with sales soaring 40 per cent in the year just ended, Siaou-Sze Lien, Hewlett-Packard's managing director for Asia Pacific, told a news conference.

"The Asia-Pacific has become a significant growth engine for H-P worldwide," she said.

The world's No 3 personal computer maker, which is in the middle of a makeover by glamorous chief executive Carly Fiorina, chalked up net revenue in Asia of $7.1 billion in its fiscal year ended October 31, up from $5.1 billion the year before.

The firm, which is concentrating on expanding services such as consulting, increased worldwide sales by 15 per cent over the year to $48.8 billion.

Lien, who declined to forecast next year's revenues from Asia, said Japan, South Korea, India, China were among the firm's fastest-growing markets in the region, with demand particularly strong for personal computers for the home and UNIX servers.

Like other high-tech companies, Hewlett-Packard aims to cash in on Asia's low Internet penetration rates and its love affair with the mobile phone.

"The mobile penetration rate in the Asia-Pacific is relatively higher compared to other places," Lien said.

"What that means is that it will give us opportunities to provide solutions in mobile commerce and wireless Internet solutions for our customers," she said. Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, California, sent Wall Street into a swoon on November 13 when it missed its forecast profits by nearly 20 per cent and called off talks to buy the consulting arm of accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The firm blamed the shortfall on margin pressures, adverse currency effects, unexpectedly high expenses and a changing business mix.

But Lien said H-P's Asia-Pacific operations, which hired 1,000 extra people the past year, mainly in sales, had largely escaped the shift toward cheaper products that had hit other regions.

"Our product mix is quite balanced at both the high end and the medium and low end, although we do see some trend in increasing demand for low-end products, especially notebooks," she said.

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