Hewlett-Packard CEO: will introduce cloud services to raise quarterly dividend

The company plans to launch a cloud computing service and raise its quarterly dividend, the Hewlett-Packard CEO, Apotheker, said today in the morning News of Beijing time March 15.　　Li Ai says HP will also use its own webOS operating system in more consumer and commercial equipment to better collaborate with its various products. "In this game, scale is very important," says Apotheker. We are building an open platform to provide developers with a trusted brand.　　He said the number of webOS devices will be shipped more than 100 million units this year. Mark Hurd, the former CEO of HP, Hurd to cut costs to speed sales growth and improve product quality. Now, Apotheker is changing that. When he took over as CEO last November, HP was facing more intense competition in the cloud computing market.　　Tim Bajarin, a consultancy Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bagalin, said the company had an advantage in the corporate market. Bajarin said: "100 million webOS equipment is HP's major move." None of the companies except HP can do this. Hewlett-Packard CFO Kessie Les Gac Cathie Lesjak announced that the company's quarterly dividend will rise from 8 cents per share to 12 cents, up 50%. It is the first time that HP has raised dividends since 1998.　　Les Gac also said HP would take an active takeover strategy and focus on software growth for cloud computing products. Apotheker said earlier that HP plans to preinstall the webOS operating system on every PC it produces next year.　　These devices can also run the Windows operating system.　　HP plans to develop an open cloud computing online store where businesses and consumers will have access to a wide range of applications and handle computing tasks over the Internet. Apotheker said last month that it would overhaul the HP PC business, which has a revenue of $41 billion trillion. In addition, HP will make acquisitions and expand the software market under IBM and Oracle.　　Li Ai says HP will expand research and development spending and accelerate the pace of innovation in the market. Analysts expect HP's 2011-year sales to grow 3.7% and 2012 to 4.4%. At the time of Mr Hurd's tenure, the figure averaged about 8%. Hewlett-Packard said last month that the performance of the fiscal quarter and fiscal year would be lower than analysts had expected, as consumer demand weakened. (Yan Fei)