Michael Hiltzik: HP and Xerox: Can two dinosaurs carry each other into the high-tech future?
For anyone who has grown up in the computer technology era, the recent histories of HP (that is, Hewlett Packard) and Xerox must elicit nothing but sadness.
What's saddest of all is the idea that merging these two doddering old hulks may be the only way to save them.
HP and Xerox have a few features in common. They both have storied pasts. They're both wedded to a strategy of making supposedly innovative advances in commodity products with stagnant or declining markets - printers and personal computers in HP's case, and office printers and copiers in Xerox's.
They both seem to have put more effort lately in financial and corporate reengineering than, you know, engineering. Both are undergoing severe downsizing, with Xerox planning to cut $640 million in expenses and HP looking at cutting $1 billion by 2022, in part by shedding 9,000 employees.
Something else they have in common: Carl Icahn.
The veteran activist investor currently holds 10.6% of Xerox stock and, according to an interview he gave this week to the Wall Street Journal, 4.24% of HP. Merging the two companies appears to be his idea,
