HP Abruptly Closes Russian Online Services

HP Abruptly Closes Russian Online Services

According to CNews, a leading information technology publication in Russia, HP has closed its official website in response to the sanctions imposed by the United States.

The shutdown terminates all channels to access online resources in Russia, including driver downloads for HP hardware, essential software, and online customer support. To date, Russia has been removed from the Country/Region list and all landing pages of HP. Attempts to visit the original HP’s Russian website will redirect users to the homepage of Kazakhstan, where Russian is one of the spoken languages. Interestingly, Kazakhstan is also not on HP’s Country/Region list, suggesting that the Kazakhstani site may serve as a temporary placeholder for the Russian site.

CNews condemned HP’s furtive move, as it failed to issue any announcements or notifications to users before abruptly shutting down the website. In contrast, Microsoft, which announced to block corporate could services in Russia on March 20, provided several days for users to transition to alternative solutions before service termination at the end of March.

HP’s decision to exit the Russian market was made in March, 2022. From then on, HP stopped exporting new products to Russia. However, it did not dramatically affect local markets thanks to parallel imports. Still, HP is far beyond the leader of Russian printer market. According to statistics from RosBiznesConsulting, Pantum dominated Russian printer market with a lion’s share of 53%. On the contrary in the third quarter of 2022, while HP’s share fell to just 21%.

Furthermore, CNews astringently pointed out that “while HP is boycotting Russia, the rest of the world is boycotting HP”, in reference to HP’s firmware update that blocks the use of third-party cartridges.

Related:

• HP Reports Q1 Results for Fiscal 2024
• HP CEO Willing to Break Customer Printers Over 3rd-Party Supplies
• HP Releases More Diabolical Firmware Updates
• HP Continues to Block Third-party Consumables

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