Key Takeaways from HP Imagine 2024

Last week, I attended #HPImagine, HP 's second annual media and analyst event. The event highlighted the company's latest innovations and its vision for the future of work. Having attended the event for both years, I noticed significant progress in the company's ability to present a unified narrative and vision across its diverse product lines, including PCs, printers, conferencing systems, and workplace services.

Known globally for its leadership in PCs and printing, HP is undergoing a strategic transformation from a hardware company to a comprehensive provider of AI-driven devices, solutions, and services. The event provided an excellent platform for engaging with HP executives and exploring the company’s cutting-edge innovations, from next-generation?AI?PCs to intelligent print solutions and new meeting room technologies.

Embracing AI across the Portfolio

In his keynote, president and CEO Enrique Lores outlined the company’s vision for hybrid work, which heavily emphasizes AI-powered innovations for greater productivity and employee fulfillment. He set the stage by referring to HP’s 2024 Work Relationship Index (https://www.hp.com/us-en/work-relationship-index.html ), a global survey of 15,600 knowledge workers, ITDMs, and business leaders. According to the survey, only 28% of the respondents reported a healthy relationship with work. A mere 27% said they consistently get the tools and equipment they need to succeed. Lores stated, “Both employers and employees realize things need to change.” Therein lies the opportunity for HP to help its customers address the intersection between companies' need for productivity and growth and employees' desire for engaging work experiences. Today, HP’s extensive portfolio, spanning PCs, displays, docking systems, meeting room solutions, printers, and workplace services, represents an integral part of an employee's daily life, and HP wants to capitalize on this footprint to deliver best-in-class experiences.

HP's leadership team—Anneliese Olson, Alex Cho , Tuan Tran , and Dave Shull —outlined how the company has enhanced its technology portfolio to leverage opportunities with AI in three ways:

- Build platforms with AI-powered insights and automation

- Deliver smart technologies that enable personalized experiences

- Create compelling team collaboration experiences

?As part of this vast vision, HP announced and showcased many new products and services, including next-gen AI PCs, on-demand GPU workstation solutions for developers, new Poly video conferencing bars, AI features for printers, and expanded workplace and managed services, including enhanced fleet management and remote remediation capabilities.

HP executives reiterated the company’s commitment to double down on the commercial business. The company has seen recent success and growing momentum in the commercial sector. In its FY Q324 earnings, the company reported a?return to growth for the first time in nine quarters, up 2% YoY, driven by strong growth in Commercial Personal Systems sales, which grew at 8%, while revenue from consumer Personal Systems fell 1% YoY.

Leveraging Growth Opportunities in the AI PC Era

AI PCs represent the next era of personal computing and are central to HP’s growth vision. HP expects that AI PCs will make up around 50% of its shipments in 2027, three years after launch, and they will drive an average selling price increase between 5% and 10%, creating a pivotal opportunity for accelerating growth in its Personal Systems division.

?HP’s next-gen AI PCs unlock the potential of their advanced NPU to enhance performance, productivity, and security and?change the user experience through personalization and natural interactions. The new line of laptops is equipped with the?HP AI Companion app and Poly Camera Pro, which personalize and optimize the user experience.?HP AI Companion is a suite of pre-installed AI tools offering features like file analysis, content creation, and task optimization. The Poly Camera Pro utilizes the AI PC’s NPU to offer enhanced webcam features like Background Blur while preserving battery life. By creating a platform that allows people to use AI at the edge, whether on the computer or the printer, HP is helping its customers enhance speed and cost efficiency while reducing reliance on cloud AI. Moreover, since the data stays on the device, it ensures privacy and security. ?

At the event, HP also announced HP Print AI, which addresses the many common challenges users face with printing. A key feature of Print AI is Perfect Output, which ensures that what users see on the screen and what they intend to print is aligned with the output. According to HP, more than half of the print jobs come from web browsers, typically ridden with unnecessary white space, image size issues, and web ads.?Perfect Output optimizes the print output to eliminate unwanted content, saving time, ink, and paper in one fell swoop.

HP Workforce Solutions is a Strategic Growth Vector

Driven by customers' growing demand for comprehensive monitoring and management, HP is expanding its Workforce Solutions portfolio. As businesses navigate the complexities of hybrid work, managed and support services represent a significant opportunity. HP’s Workforce Solutions is uniquely positioned since it covers a broad range of devices under IT’s purview, including PCs, printers, and audio-video meeting solutions. With over 200 million devices worldwide equipped with telemetry, HP is uniquely positioned to assist IT managers in understanding device usage and gaining insights into workforce engagement and productivity.

Launched earlier this year, HP’s Workforce Experience Platform has been in private beta for three months and has more than 270K devices enrolled. The company is expanding access by making the Platform Beta available to new or renewing HP Proactive Insights customers in the United States at no additional cost. It has added new capabilities for AI-powered fleet management and employee sentiment analysis to reduce IT support tickets and employee downtime through proactive anomaly detection and smart recommendations. In addition, HP has announced the global availability of its Managed Collaboration Services, which use Poly and HP gear to deliver fully managed meeting room?solutions.

HP’s expanding focus on managed and support services is a market differentiator. Last week, HP announced the acquisition of Vyopta, further advancing its ability to provide AI-driven contextual insights and proactive alerts across devices, spaces, and users. In a landscape where device margins are increasingly compressed, these value-added services enable partners to diversify their offerings and maintain profitability.

Accelerated Innovation in Video Devices

At the event, HP launched four new video bars with high-quality audio and video capabilities and AI-enabled features.

- Poly Studio X32 all-in-one video bar for small rooms

- Poly Studio X72 all-in-one video bar for large rooms

- Poly Studio V32 USB video bar for small rooms

- Poly Studio V72 USB video bar for large rooms

These new products come on the heels of several new products announced earlier in the year, including the Poly Studio E360 center-of-table camera that provides 360-degree coverage for meeting equity, the Poly Studio V52 USB video bar that extends BYOD's reach into midsize rooms, and the Poly Studio E60 mechanical PTZ camera that is targeted at large spaces. The new products offer updated software features, including Poly VideoOS 4.4, which introduces Poly Director AI Perimeter, allowing real-time configuration of smart camera boundaries, and Poly NoiseBlockAI v2, which uses machine learning to eliminate reverberations from glass walls and reflective surfaces.

At the event, I also saw a demo of Project Starline, a groundbreaking collaboration between Google and HP that's set to redefine video meetings. This innovative solution harnesses advanced AI and 3D imaging to create an immersive audio-video experience. Project Starline effectively bridges the gap between virtual and in-person interactions, making participants feel as if they're sitting across the table from each other. One of its standout features is maintaining true eye contact—a critical element often lost in traditional video conferencing. While Project Starline shows immense promise, there's still work to be done. The solution must evolve to become more flexible and adaptable for real-world multimodal communications, including seamless content collaboration capabilities to enhance its practical applications across a broad set of use cases. HP is now accepting bookings for early delivery, with the first available units planned to ship in 2025.

Poly's recent product launches have breathed new life into its video conferencing lineup, showcasing its unwavering dedication to innovation. This year, the synergies from the HP Poly integration have become increasingly evident, as seen in the impressive revenue growth and market share growth for Poly video devices in CY Q2 2024. This success story is further amplified by the combined HP Poly go-to-market strategy, leveraging an extensive global partner network.

In the future, HP must tap into emerging opportunities by seamlessly integrating its strong portfolio of next-gen computing with meeting room technology. By leveraging its strengths in AI PCs, HP can redefine room video collaboration. Imagine a system where room devices and personal laptops work in harmony, creating a multidimensional, personalized experience. This unified intelligent edge approach could change meeting dynamics, offering immersive and tailored interactions for each participant.

All in all, HP Imagine showcased the company's expansive vision and remarkable innovations, highlighting its agility in adapting to the constantly shifting needs of its customers. The company's commitment to sustainability remains evident across its new product lines, though surprisingly, unlike last year there wasn't a dedicated main stage session on this topic.

HP's strategic pivot from a traditional hardware manufacturer to an end-to-end provider of next-generation devices, solutions, and services is impressive. Its AI-first and user-centric approach positions it as a preferred vendor for organizations that want a single vendor for all their communication devices and services.