Hewlett Packard's Kittyhawk

Paper Summary:

The paper relates that in the summer of 1992, computer gadgets company Hewlett-Packard launched onto the market the smallest hard disk ever made, the Kittyhawk. The paper describes the success of this design but reveals the disk's short-term success and the closing of the Kittyhawk project. The paper explains the failures regarding the target market and the costs involved. The paper concludes that the short success told Hewlett-Packard that they could do it, but the failure showed them they must increase their efforts in order to succeed.

From the Paper:

"In the summer of 1992, computer gadgets company Hewlett-Packard launched onto the market the smallest hard disk ever made, the Kittyhawk. It was 1.3 inches in diameter and had a storage capacity of 20 megabytes, representing the latest innovation of those times. That year, HP's Disk Memory Division, responsible for the creation of the Kittyhawk registered a total of $519 million sales revenues, when the industry leaders, IBM and Seagate Technology registered $4 billion and $5 billion from selling their hard drives."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Christensen, C.M., Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk, Harvard Business School, March 2001
• Official Website of Hewlett-Packard, www.hp.com last accessed on February 5, 2008

More papers on Hewlett Packard's Kittyhawk:

• Case Study # 115314 : "HP Kittyhawk Case Study"
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