David Grober

The year 2011 saw Android and Apple battling for mobile domination, with patents rivaling technology as the weapon of choice. We watched HP's soap opera, RIM's decline, and Netflix's crash. We said goodbye to Steve Jobs. And the answer to most every question continued to be "the Cloud."

Hewlett-Packard is the PC leader and has a wide range of business ranging from printing to software to enterprise servers. HP also is a major services player via the acquisition of EDS. HP's primary rival is IBM and CEO Mark Hurd aims to sell customers an entire stack of hardware, software and services. To Hurd, scale and efficiency is everything.

Hewlett-Packard remains the leader in the printing space, which is a high-margin business courtesy of ink supplies. However, enterprises are increasingly knowledgeable about the costs of printing and looking to farm management of these devices out to companies like HP and Xerox. Other key players: Lexmark, Eastman Kodak and Ricoh.

Hewlett-Packard is the PC leader and has a wide range of businesses ranging from printing to software to enterprise servers. HP also is a major services player via the acquisition of EDS. As IBM's primary rival, HP aims to sell customers an entire stack of hardware, software and services. Under Mark Hurd, HP was a lean, mean operational machine. The next CEO, however, must show that HP can grow organically sans acquisitions and cost cuts.