What just happened? Like many companies, HP halted its operations in Russia and Belarus soon after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The tech giant has now completed its exit from Russia, shutting down its local website that had been used to download drivers and for technical support. In response, Russians have complained that HP offered no warning that it was about to close the site, and the country’s media had pointed to the controversy over its printer policies, claiming that “the rest of the world is boycotting HP.”
In March 2022, HP was one of many Western firms to announce it was leaving Russia and Belarus – where its sales generated around $1 billion – as a response to the invasion of Ukraine. The impact of stopping the supply of equipment to the countries wasn’t too severe thanks to parallel imports, which involve importing products from other nations without the permission of the IP owner.
Now, to comply with US-mandated sanctions, HP has completely withdrawn from Russia. Trying to access HP’s Russian website automatically redirects visitors to the company’s website in Kazakhstan, where Russian is one of the two most-spoken languages. Users can download drivers for HP products from this website, but there is no online support. HP’s Belarus website also redirects to the Kazakhstan site.
Russian news outlet CNews complains that HP did not send out notifications informing users that it was shutting down its Russian website, choosing instead to do everything surreptitiously. The publication notes that this stands in contrast to Microsoft, which gave Russian companies about a week to find new cloud services before kicking them off its platform.
HP saw its 36% share of the Russian printer market fall to 21% in the third quarter of 2022 following the suspension of operations. Chinese company Pantum took the top spot with a 53% share, up from just 16% a year earlier. Second-place Epson still has a 22.1% share of the Russian market despite it also suspending exports in 2022.
CNews writes that while HP is boycotting Russia, the rest of the world is boycotting HP. The site highlights the long-running controversies over the company’s printers, including its ink subscription model and the policy of forcing people to use HP cartridges.
