Hewlett-Packard

HP Full Form in English, letter by letter

HP is short for Hewlett-Packard, the American company founded in 1939 that is known today for laptops and printers.

HP Full Form in Indian Languages

HP is the brand on countless laptops and printers in Indian homes and offices. Here is Hewlett-Packard in six Indian languages.

The full form and the garage

HP full form is Hewlett-Packard, named after its founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. They started the company in 1939 in a small garage at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, California, with an audio oscillator as their first real product.

Walt Disney Productions bought a batch of those oscillators to test the sound system for the film Fantasia, giving the young firm an early big customer. The garage is preserved as a California historical landmark and is often called the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

Early HP became known for profit-sharing and a relaxed management culture later labelled the HP Way, which influenced how technology companies treated staff.

Through the 1970s and 1980s HP built its reputation on instruments and calculators. The HP-35 of 1972 was the first handheld scientific calculator. Printers followed, with LaserJet arriving in 1984 and DeskJet in 1988, and both names are still sold today.

The HP name is also on a big range of products beyond laptops, including monitors, desktop computers, accessories and workstations. In India, authorised service centres exist in most large cities, but warranty claims need the original invoice, so keep it with the device.

Two companies share the name today

On 1 November 2015 the original Hewlett-Packard split in two. HP Inc. took the personal computers and printers, the consumer brand people buy in Indian shops, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) kept servers, storage, networking and services for data centres.

So an HP laptop and an HP ProLiant server are made by different listed companies, even though both trace back to the same 1939 firm.

HP Inc. is among the world's largest PC vendors, and its printing division is a major profit source because ink and toner are repeat purchases.

If you need service, the support you get depends on the company that made the product. An HP laptop or printer is serviced through HP Inc. channels, while an HPE server has a separate support system. Keep your invoice and serial number, since warranty is checked against both.

Mergers that changed the company

In 2002 HP bought Compaq for around 25 billion dollars, a contested deal pushed through by chief executive Carly Fiorina that made HP one of the largest PC makers.

In 2010 it acquired Palm for about 1.2 billion dollars to get the webOS mobile system, then discontinued the TouchPad tablet within weeks of launch.

In 2011 it bought the British software firm Autonomy for about 11 billion dollars and later wrote down roughly 8.8 billion dollars of that value, one of the largest accounting disputes in technology history.

What HP sells, and how to read the names

When comparing models, look past the name. The processor (CPU) generation, the amount of RAM and whether the storage is an SSD change daily speed far more than the series name does. Two laptops with the same HP series name can differ a lot on these three specifications, so read the spec sheet for the exact model number.

Laptops

Pavilion lines suit home use, ProBook and EliteBook target business buyers with better build and manageability, Spectre sits at the premium end, and OMEN and Victus cover gaming.

Printers

LaserJet uses toner and suits documents and offices. DeskJet and ENVY are inkjet models for photos and home printing. Instant Ink is a subscription that ships cartridges based on pages printed. Check the price of a replacement set and its page yield first, since consumables, not the machine, decide what printing costs over the years.

Buying in India

HP machines are sold through distributors, retail stores and online marketplaces, with model numbers that differ by region. Check the exact model suffix and the warranty terms for India rather than comparing with a foreign listing.

Other meanings of HP: HPCL, Himachal Pradesh, horsepower

In India the letters HP also appear on the petrol pumps of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, abbreviated HPCL. The two companies are unrelated: one is an American computer and printer company, the other a state-controlled oil marketing company. Context usually settles it instantly, with pumps on one side and laptops and cartridges on the other.

HP is also the standard short form of Himachal Pradesh, and the letters on vehicle number plates from that state are HP. In engineering, hp is the unit horsepower, used for motors and pumps.

Do not mix up HP with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, which sells the data-centre hardware and has been a different listed company since 2015.

From a Palo Alto garage in 1939 to the laptop on your desk, Hewlett-Packard is a short name with a long and sometimes turbulent history. Knowing the 2015 split, and the unrelated HPCL and Himachal Pradesh, keeps the letters straight.

HP Full Form: Common Questions