with the personal computer division recording the steepest drop at 14 per cent. Revenue from printing fell 5 per cent. HP reported a quarterly net loss of $3.49 a share, versus a profit of $239 million, or 12 cents, a year earlier. Victor Basta, managing director of Magister Advisors, said: "HP's pursuit of a "buy software to get out of hardware" strategy has failed. Autonomy was always an off piste deal. "Many large businesses will do a series of bread and butter mid-sized deals, but in HP's case they went for broke. "HP are clearly on a mission to change but it was essential they worked first to fix the culture and revamp the business before making a game-changing acquisition. "HP's leadership made a huge mistake by attempting to 'fix by buying'. "Autonomy's business is based on a one time software licence model as opposed to a subscription model. "At the time of acquisition it was also growing very fast.  Put that speed of growth and the one off sales model together and you have a business that is incredibly difficult to value and very challenging to manage and integrate. "Candidly, it was like putting an 18 year old who just passed their driving instruction behind the wheel of a Ferrari. "The markets, quite reasonably, have been asking the question: "what happened to the $13 billion?"  What's clear is that the business hasn't been able to cohere around a strategy for integrating Autonomy and transforming the HP business." "It needn't