Despite a downturn in its business for consumer products, HP’s European e3000 business has made a good start in a hard quarter for the company. HP warned analysts that the second quarter wasn’t shaping up well. “In Europe, what we’ve seen in this quarter obviously is a rapid slowdown in consumer spending. It has hit both our European PC and our European consumer printer business,” said CEO Carly Fiorina in an analyst conference call. Fiorina said that European businesses have also become markedly more cautious during the quarter. The caution, however, doesn’t seem to extend to the enterprise server business. “In contrast with the increasing weakness in the consumer space, revenues from our enterprise business are expected to be flat or up slightly on a sequential basis,” Fiorina said in an analyst briefing.

Rising business on the e3000 side of the enterprise segment is contributing to the recovery. The division’s Worldwide Marketing Manager Christine Martino said that a 20-city road show through Europe drew “anywhere from 30 to 80 customers per city,” substantial numbers given the overall size of the 3000 market. “We went everywhere, from Scandinavia, to Italy to Germany. It’s been very well attended, and by the time we’ve finished the tour we will have reached nearly 800 customers.” The marketing manager is expecting a healthy quarter’s results for the e3000, too. “I think we’re going to have a pretty terrific quarter,” she said. “It really shows our customers have been waiting for these systems. The other thing that’s pretty telling is that quotes and orders have so quickly moved from those older systems to the new systems. We expected there to be a more steady stream of sales of the older systems, and a slower uptake of the new systems. It hasn’t been that way at all. People have been galvanized around the A- and N-Class.”