By Joel Rothstein

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Executives at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and Dell Inc. (DELL), fierce rivals in the personal computer market, described diverging paths for their companies' futures on Monday.

While Dell is squarely focused on being the volume leader for personal computers and other devices, HP is promoting broader goals in corporate data center management and printing.

Despite these contrasting emphases, both companies will continue selling a lot of computers for the foreseeable future.

Dell Chairman and founder Michael Dell, speaking at a San Diego technology conference, emphasized selling new consumer devices, such as state of the art computer monitors and media PCs designed to handle television, music and photos.

He described the increased productivity, including his own, from workers using multiple computing screens.

Dell also said that video game enthusiasts, rather than scientists, proved to be the largest customer segment for some of its more powerful machines - a nod to the unpredictability of fast moving technology markets -- a trend he expects will continue as consumers find new uses for their machines.

By contrast, HP Senior Vice President Dick Lampman, in an interview with Reuters at the San Diego meeting, focused on his company's software and system management projects.

Lampman, head of HP's research group, said that managing data centers is one of the company's main initiatives over the next five years. Beyond individual machines, data center management includes software, energy consumption and labor.

"Data centers today are still very people intensive, with humans responsible for tasks that machines should be doing," Lampman said.

"Obviously we don't have systems operators running around typing long strings of characters and punctuation to reset the phone system," Lampman said describing the current challenges corporations face.

Lampman's vision is that HP's software will make corporate data centers as efficient and easy to operate as telecommunications switching centers.

HP is particularly focused on driving down energy consumption which Lampman described as an emerging concern as costs have skyrocketed in recent months.

In the past year, investors have punished Dell for sagging growth while rewarding HP for cost cuts made under Mark Hurd, who was hired a year ago as the company's new chief executive.

Since the beginning of 2005, HP's stock is up nearly 54 percent while Dell's is down 40 percent.

Dell, which is expected to announce its quarterly earnings on Thursday, warned last week that its earnings would fall short of its forecast because of price cuts.

"We used to be three times more profitable than our competitors. Now we are 2.5 times more profitable, Dell said. "We underestimated how fast some of them were moving," he added, appearing to acknowledge Hurd's recent efforts since he took over for former HP CEO Carly Fiorina last year.

HP is expected to announce its earnings on Tuesday.

Far beyond its history as a device maker, Lampman also said that its online photography business Snapfish.com, which HP acquired last year, is a prime example of how the company wants to expand its printing business.

"Snapfish is a real force," Lampman said describing the expectations executives have in the new unit that competes with Yahoo's Flickr and many other Web-based digital photo printing and storage services.

Other attendees at the annual "Future in Review conference include Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen, Goldman Sachs (GS) Co-Chairman Bob Hormats, Telstra Corp. CEO Sol Trujillo and Wipro Ltd. CEO Azim Premji.