develop new products and product lines to challenge its key competitors--Apple Computer, Casio, Compaq, Control Data, Data General, Digital Equipment Corporation, Texas Instruments, Sony, Wang, Sharp, NEC, and Sun Microsystems.
Another innovative strategy has been in terms of acquisitions, usually other companies in the electronics field that offer some product line that complements that of Hewlett-Packard. In 1989 Hewlett-Packard purchased Apollo Computers, a pioneer in workstations, and so became the leader in workstations itself. This was a case where innovation actually slowed progress, though, because the two systems were at first incompatible, delaying workstation development. Hewlett-Packard bought Avantek, a microwave component manufacturer, in 1991. The company bought a 5 percent interest in Convex Computer in 1992. This company makes massively parallel computers, and Convex now uses RISC technology in its supercomputers.
Hewlett-Packard has found a way to serve a mass-consumption market with its inkjet printers so that it now has a global lead. The company has been able to hold its lead in old markets while finding highly remunerative opportunities in niches abandoned by others. The company's original move into the computer business was an example of the sort of necessary adaptation that it has continued to purs
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