Hardware as a Service: HP Gets Ready to Lease Computers to Businesses

HP Inc., the second largest PC-maker in the world after Lenovo, on Thursday said that it will start offering computers and other hardware products on lease going ahead as it prepares itself to tackle the problem of weak PC sales.

HP's corporate customers will be now able to pay a fixed monthly fee per employee for the equipment by the company, enabling them to use their capital elsewhere instead of paying for the hardware upfront.

HP will be using its software to manage how its devices will be deployed. The company hopes tight software and hardware integration will enable it to find out if its customer's employees have hardware that is sophisticated enough to meet their processing or storage needs.

This will also allow the company to monitor the health of its components and provide replacements if need be. The company has further said that it will ensure that all data is erased from the devices once they go out of service and that the hardware is also recycled.

This would be done in order to make sure that sensitive information does not land up in wrong hands once the devices are taken back from the employees.

In April, research firm Gartner came out with a report that said that worldwide PC sales saw an year-on-year decline of around 9.6 percent in Jan-Mar 2016. The research firm said," This was the sixth consecutive quarter of PC shipment declines, and the first time since 2007 that shipment volume fell below 65 million units."

According to the report, HP had 17.6 percent of PC market share in Jan-Mar, only behind Lenovo with 19.3 percent of the total market share.

In November last year, Hewlett Packard Co was split into two separate entities i.e. HP Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.