Hewlett-Packard Co says it plans to increase its dividend for the first time in more than a decade and one day soon sell “cloud computing” services to the public.
The changes are part of new CEO Leo Apotheker’s efforts to chart a new course for the world’s biggest technology company by revenue.
Apotheker started four months ago after his predecessor, Mark Hurd, was ousted in a sexual harassment scandal.
Apotheker’s presentation on Monday at a conference for industry analysts and reporters marked the first time he has publicly outlined his strategy for HP since taking the job.
The dividend has been US$0.08 per share since 1998. It will rise to US$0.12 per share the next time the board of directors declares a dividend, which should be in May.
The company plans to offer a complete range of cloud computing services and release its touchscreen tablet computer, the TouchPad, in June, Apotheker said. He said HP hopes to eventually offer the WebOS operating system powering the TouchPad on 100 million devices a year — from smartphones to computers.
HP bought Palm, the developer of WebOS, last year.
Apotheker said HP plans to make a major push into cloud services — offering applications and storing data over the Internet.
“HP intends to build and run an HP cloud,” he said. “We’ll launch infrastructure as a service for our enterprise customers, and we will be launching a public cloud offering in the near future.”
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