Sanduski Joins HP's DTV Unit

By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, 12/4/2006

Ridgefield Park, N.J. — Jim Sanduski, the recently named senior VP of sales for Samsung's consumer electronics products, joins Hewlett-Packard today, in the newly created position of digital television solutions business unit VP.

Samsung has not yet named a successor.

Sanduski will report to John Orcutt, who was named to the newly created position of managed home business unit VP on Nov. 1, returning to HP after a number of years with San Francisco Bay-area startup and venture capital companies, including Blue Stream Ventures, Talking Blocks, Actional and 3DO.

Orcutt last worked for HP in product marketing in the late 1980s.

Orcutt's managed home business unit encompasses both the aforementioned digital television solutions business unit and the personal storage business unit. Orcutt reports to Todd Bradley, personal systems group senior VP.

Sanduski, who worked for Samsung in a variety of consumer electronics sales and marketing capacities for the past 12 and a half years, will be responsible for growing HP's flat-panel TV businesses worldwide. The role covers digital television business strategy and product planning, procurement and delivery. He will be relocating to HP's operations in Cupertino, Calif.

Sanduski said he decided to leave Samsung to pursue exciting new opportunities with HP.

"Today, HP's digital television business is centered in the U.S., but we have ambitions to take that business global over the mid-term," Sanduski told TWICE.

"While my role at Samsung was focused on the U.S. market, initially my role at HP will be focused on the U.S., but the company has ambitions to take the television business global, and I found that aspect of the business to be intriguing. Also, in the past I have worked on the front-end of product marketing, which involved taking products that had pretty much been designed and engineered in Korea and then working with the team at Samsung to market them in the United States.

"This role with HP will be kind of the reverse. I'll be on the back end, responsible for leading the team in deciding the future road map, figuring out what it is that consumers want and desire," he continued.

Sanduski said he expects to help grow HP's digital television business to achieve leading market-share status, just as he had done with Samsung, but in a way that is differentiated from the established leaders.

"We might take more of an IT approach, taking advantage of HP's expertise there to leverage activity trends like watching television over the Internet," Sanduski said. "We could take the traditional stand-alone device and create an ecosystem around it, connecting to the Internet, the PC and storage devices to stream videos, pictures and music around the home over wired or wireless networks."

Sanduski said that he could see the possibility of HP developing ancillary businesses around its TV products in a method similar to the way Apple has developed a market for the iPod.