Hewlett-Packard is to cut 10 per cent of its workforce, which could mean up to 30,000 redundancies, as plans to divide the company in two unfold.

The losses will come when Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) splits from the printer and PC business. The jobs cull will cost $2.7bn to carry out but will save the same amount in running costs every year, says HP.

The new structure proposed by chief executive Meg Whitman would steer HP Enterprise’s focus onto enterprises and government agencies while the PC and printing divisions would concentrate primarily on the consumer market.

Details have not been released about where the job cuts will be made, but Whitman told Wall Street analysts that the plan involves changing the nature of the workforce. The proportion of workers in what HPE calls ‘low-cost locations’ is expected to rise from today’s figure of around 42 per cent to to 60 per cent by 2018.

“We’ve done a significant amount of work over the past few years to take costs out and simplify processes,” Meg Whitman told a meeting of shareholders and Wall Street analysts, “these final actions will eliminate the need for any future corporate restructuring.”

Since the height of the dot com boom in 2000 Hewlett Packard’s stock has lost 60 per cent of its value. However, Hewlett-Packard remains one of the world’s largest technology companies, with revenues this year expected to top $50bn.

Earlier this year HP cut 55,000 jobs. These will not be the last of the job cuts, predicted Charles King, analyst at the Silicon Valley IT consulting firm Pund-IT. “The number is sadly larger than some people might have expected, but I think it’s a reflection of how much trouble HP has been having with its services,” said King.