HEXUS.sharewatch: HP plunges on weak outlook

The IT powerhouses of the past few decades - such as Microsoft and Cisco - are all having to reinvent themselves, and HP is no exception. Its new CEO - Leo Apotheker - has had a bit of time to suss out his new problem project, and he's wasting little time in making what he uncovers public.

The latest quarterly results from HP were modestly above expectations, but its outlook wasn't. Noting real softness in its PC business (in line with the broader market, it must be said), Apotheker said he thinks HP has been short-termist about its services business, and has under-invested. As a result HP's outlook disappointed investors, and its shares have been pummelled accordingly.

On another note, we revised out list this week; adding Sony and Vodafone's US listings and dropping the distributors Ingram Micro and Tech Data.Interesting to note that, by market cap, Vodafone is bigger than Intel, but smaller than Google, while Sony is smaller than Dell and Nokia.

We felt our list was incomplete without representation from a consumer electronics specialist and a mobile operator, and for the sake of currency continuity, we're restricting ourselves to companies with a US listing. Meanwhile we've found the share prices of the disties don't tend to fluctuate as much as some, and often follow each other, so we thought just having the biggest one on our list would be sufficient.