HP 2015 Annual Report Download - page 14

Table of Contents
Patents generally have a term of twenty years from the date they are filed. As our patent portfolio has been built over time, the remaining terms of the
individual patents across our patent portfolio vary. We believe that our patents and patent applications are important for maintaining the competitive
differentiation of our products and services, enhancing our freedom of action to sell our products and services in markets in which we choose to participate,
and maximizing our return on research and development investments. No single patent is in itself essential to HP as a whole or to any of HP's business
segments.
In addition to developing our patent portfolio, we license intellectual property ("IP") from third parties as we deem appropriate. We have also granted and
continue to grant to others licenses, and other rights, under our patents when we consider these arrangements to be in our interest. These license arrangements
include a number of cross-licenses with third parties.
For a discussion of risks attendant to IP rights, see "Risk Factors—Our financial performance may suffer if we cannot continue to develop, license or
enforce the intellectual property rights on which our businesses depend," in Item 1A, which is incorporated herein by reference.
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We believe that backlog is not a meaningful indicator of future business prospects due to our diverse products and services portfolio, including the large
volume of products delivered from finished goods or channel partner inventories and the shortening of product life cycles. Therefore, we believe that backlog
information is not material to an understanding of our overall business.
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General economic conditions have an impact on our business and financial results. From time to time, the markets in which we sell our products and
services experience weak economic conditions that may negatively affect sales. We experience some seasonal trends in the sale of our products and services.
For example, European sales are often weaker in the summer months and consumer sales are often stronger in the fourth calendar quarter. Demand during the
spring and early summer months also may be adversely impacted by market anticipation of seasonal trends. See "Risk Factors—Our uneven sales cycle makes
planning and inventory management difficult and future financial results less predictable," in Item 1A, which is incorporated herein by reference.
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We encounter strong competition in all areas of our business activity. We compete primarily on the basis of technology, performance, price, quality,
reliability, brand, reputation, distribution, range of products and services, ease of use of our products, account relationships, customer training, service and
support, security, availability of application software and internet infrastructure offerings.
The markets for each of our business segments are characterized by strong competition among major corporations with long-established positions and a
large number of new and rapidly growing firms. Most product life cycles are short, and to remain competitive we must develop new products and services,
periodically enhance our existing products and services and compete effectively on the basis of the factors listed above. In addition, we compete with many
of our current and potential partners, including OEMs that design, manufacture and often market their products under their own brand names. Our successful
management of these competitive partner relationships will be critical to our future success. Moreover, we anticipate that we will have to continue to adjust
prices on many of our products and services to stay competitive.
We have a broad technology portfolio spanning personal computing and other access devices, imaging and printing-related products and services,
enterprise IT infrastructure products and solutions,
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Source: HP INC, 10-K, December 16, 2015 Powered by Morningstar® Document Research℠
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