A Hewlett-Packard (HP) plan to split the company in two is expected to kick-in by October 2015, say South African company officials.

Last week, HP announced plans to split into two new companies, namely HP Inc and HP Enterprise.

HP Inc is planned to take care of HP’s printer and personal computer operations while HP Enterprise will sell hardware and services to large corporate customers.

And speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, general manager for HP SA's Printing & Personal Systems (PPS) business unit, Thibault Dousson, said local executives expect the two businesses to be fully functioning around this time next year.

According to Dousson, the same applies for HP’s South African operations, which he is currently heading as HP SA acting managing director.

“This was quite a bold move from our CEO Meg Whitman,” he said.

Dousson further explained that the split is a move to try and get the two companies to be a little more ‘agile’.

“We need a little more focus, we need to be a little more agile as well,” he said.

As for HP’s South African operations the same applies, Dousson stated.

“We are going to have to split the team here as well... and what’s nice about that is that we have twelve months in which to do that,” he said.

“We should be able to do this fairly easily in the next twelve months,” he added.  

HP is the number two PC vendor in the world after Lenovo, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC).

And the IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker revealed that HP shipped 14.7 million units in the third quarter of 2014 with growth surpassing 5%.

The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and mature markets continued to be the vendor's primary sources of growth, says the IDC.

The company’s recorded revenue is worth $112 billion. With the split, each of the HP companies are expected to be valued at $56 billion, said Dousson.