HP announces up to 30,000 layoffs ahead of big split

HP has announced the loss of up to 30,000 jobs as it prepares to divide its company into two new divisions.

The company is attempting to reduce its annual costs by $2.7 billion, as it prepares to combine its PC and printer manufacturing arms into HP Inc, and its business hardware and services groups into Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

The latest round of job cuts represents around 10 per cent of HP's workforce, and while a date has not been revealed for the lay-offs, they are widely expected to come after it splits into two separate entities in November.

It is the latest round in a series of devastating redundancies that has previously seen HP lose around 50,000 staff.

CEO Meg Whitman, who has presided over the cost-cutting, was optimistic about the company's future in a meeting with Wall Street analysts.

"We've done a significant amount of work over the past few years to take costs out and simplify processes and these final actions will eliminate the need for any future corporate restructuring," she said.

HP plans to officially divide into two businesses on 1 November, allowing Hewlett Packard Enterprise to focus more on its growing cloud and data analytics portfolio.

Similar to Google's Alphabet rebranding, both companies will be listed separately on the New York Stock Exchange, and will report their financial results separately.

Cloud is set to be a major focus for the new enterprise wing, with the company predicting 20 per cent year on year growth in its cloud businesses.

However, HP has focused on a hybrid cloud strategy, admitting that it can't compete with major providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.