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The man who has run HP's printer group for the past decade is stepping down, and his division will be folded into HP's struggling PC business.
Vyomesh Joshi is retiring after a 31-year stint at the company, HP said on Wednesday. He had run the group since 2002. Under his management, HP's high-margin printer business was the profit-engine that drove the company, but it had sputtered a bit recently. Hurt by a decline in consumer ink-sales, printing revenue was down 7 percent year-over-year, according to HP's most-recent quarterly report.
Joshi's retirement is part of a broader corporate shake-up, as HP's new CEO Meg Whitman tries to turn around the troubled company.
The combined group will be run by Todd Bradley, who has been in charge of the PC division since 2005.
Combining printers and PCs will "will lead to a better customer experience and drive innovation across personal computing and printing," HP said in a press release. It will also save HP money. And it will create a combined business unit that, on paper at least, will appear to be more profitable than PCs struggling print business.
That won't hurt a business unit that just a few months ago HP wasn't even sure it wanted to keep.
Operating margins at Joshi's printer group were 12 percent during that most-recent quarter. Over at the PC group, they were just 5 percent.
We asked HP if the two groups would be combined on HP's balance sheet, but a company spokesperson said: "We have no plans to reduce our financial disclosure at this time."
