From the day Leo Apotheker joined HP, the company is seeing an upward trend, contrary to what was happening during Mark Hurd’s reign. Apotheker has established himself as one of the powerful leaders, giving a boost to HP’s image as well as revenue figures. While Apotheker has a hefty undertaking with his new position, like the ousting of Mark Hurd, reshuffling of HP’s board and disappointing quarterly earnings,  the debut of HP Analyst Summit will give him a chance to reboot and bounce back from these transitions. The summit will initiate on 1:00 P.M at San Fransisco and will continue till 16th March.

This summit will be kicked-off this week by Apotheker himself, offering a still rare opportunity to hear from him the goals around HP’s revival and expectations for the coming year.  He will also give the investors the overview of his plans about the growth of the technology giant.  Recently, HP was also facing problems in its Personal Computer business, but later denied the rumors of selling the same.

This summit will bring into focus the long-term strategy of Apotheker. What market experts are saying is that HP should try to get out of its lower-margin business, and beef up in high-end business software. Most of them, including Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital, believe that defocusing on the PC business will help fetch better results in the near future.  Although HP is still the number 1 company for Personal Computers, other mobile devices like smartphones and tablets may take the lead.

Talking about software market, analysts remark, “Certainly, some acquisitions would make sense,” Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds said in a phone interview. “They have the cash.” On a positive note, Goldmacher of Cowen & Co. said, “H-P could do in software what it did successfully in hardware by pushing to become the low-cost vendor. While he noted that H-P’s software business is “virtually inconsequential” now, he said what was previously a disadvantage is now a “golden” opportunity.”

“H-P has no legacy business to defend and can enter the space as the low-cost alternative and compete aggressively on price while still entering a margin expanding business opportunity given the inherent profitability of software versus hardware,” he wrote in his report.

Having focused on the software domain again, a Reuters report confirms HP’s new direction. We can expect HP to reveal a plan that emphasize software over hardware.  The tech giant is expected to increase the portfolio of software holdings by making some acquisitions, with target at Symantec Corp, Teradata Corp, Informatica Corp, BMC Software Inc, CommVault Systems Inc and Tibco Software Inc.