My take on HP is that it is now truly a commodity product company, except for the Services division.  Even the Server market is IMO about to be in a tough fight given that ARM through companies like AMCC and others will help in driving down the gross margins on servers.  The printer division has not been a gross margin driver for years.  Now, I do not follow HP closely, but what innovation has come out of that company?

So, I tend to think it is mostly if not entirely company specific.  The sector has been tough given the state of commoditization. A similar company to HP is IBM, except IBM has had the ability to reinvent itself and has real R&D. IBM finds itself challenged once again, but I bet they will manage to reinvent themselves again, HP would do well in taking a page out of IBM’s book.