AMD CEO Left Over Mobile Strategy Disagreement
With smartphones becoming more and more powerful, the mobile market has become more important than ever for hardware companies. However, it seems disagreements in this area were a contributing factor for the departure of former AMD CEO Dirk Meyer. Reports suggest that the AMD board felt Dirk wasn’t doing enough in the mobile arena.
In a shock announcement earlier this week, AMD announced that CEO Dirk Meyer would be leaving the company. The move was said to be the result of a mutual agreement between Meyer and the AMD board, but later reports citing company sources say a large part of the reason for the now ex-CEO’s departture had to do with AMD's choice not to pursue making chips for the mobile market other than netbooks.
According to Reuters, sources withing AMD say Meyer’s leaving had a lot to do with the board’s discontent with how he handled the mobile market. Apparently Meyer’s late-2010 decision to hold off on microprocessor developments for just a little longer didn’t earn him any fans. Reuters also cites Wedbush analyst Patrick Wang who says board members felt Dirk was leading them down the wrong path.
"Strategically they (the board) didn't feel like Dirk was taking them down the road they wanted to be on. They wanted to be on the Yellow Brick Road toward tablets and smartphones," said Wang.
On Tuesday the AMD Board of Directors appointed Senior Vice President and CFO Thomas Seifert, 47, as interim CEO following Meyer’s resignation. Seifert will maintain his current responsibilities as CFO and has asked not to be considered for the permanent CEO position.
Bruce Claflin, Chairman of AMD’s Board of Directors, has been named Executive Chairman of the Board as he assumes additional oversight responsibilities during the transition period. Claflin this week commended Dirk’s performance during his time as CEO, but said a change in leadership was needed.
"Dirk became CEO during difficult times. He successfully stabilized AMD while simultaneously concluding strategic initiatives including the launch of GLOBALFOUNDRIES, the successful settlement of our litigation with Intel and delivering Fusion APUs to the market," he said.
"However, the Board believes we have the opportunity to create increased shareholder value over time. This will require the company to have significant growth, establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns. We believe a change in leadership at this time will accelerate the company’s ability to accomplish these objectives."

Its not like he had the ability to say "Hey lets also develop for smart phones and stuff even though our core product is failing us....". He made a hard choice. It was either get AMD moving in the right direction again or go down with the ship.
I think he made the right choice. He got AMD up and moving with a bit of steam again. In fact when he came on, Bulldozer was all but gone from road maps and he got it to the point of release this year.
But I guess the BoD wanted him to instead focus on a segment and let their main product portfolio burn.
Everyone knows the computer world is moving to the cloud while people access the cloud with smaller devices such as handhelds. And he sold Imageon to Qualcomm? That's a huge lack of vision!
Quite frankly, seeing through GF spin-off was an easy task that many could do. But selling Imageon can only be done by someone completely inept.
Cheers!
I'm not claiming to know more than the board, but I need AMD to release another great mainstream CPU, like back in the days of the Athlon.
Without that Intel's just gonna become more and more overpriced.
I don't see focussing on mobile helping them take Intel.
I love you.
...You, too.
I love how these meatheads don't understand that you should at least have ONE thing that can perform decently compared to other companies' products. Apparently, not only does the BoD want to suck at making processors, they want to suck even more in the mobile market. I hope they're reading this right now... Hey, shitheads!... Maybe you should fix what you already have and THEN focus on expanding into other markets!
Having been a loyal AMD customer up until now, I hope they know that their stupidity has just lost them another customer... I always thought there was actually a chance for AMD to turn itself around until just now... nope. Unless Bulldozer is an absolute tank, they're just going to stay in the same situation for many years to come.
Seriously, such a company must be a little conservative and stay focused on 2-3 things, you can't expect a company which struggles in low power even for netbooks (until recently with the mediocre bobcat) to succeed in the mobile market without investing an arm and a leg on a possible failure.
Good call, Dirk, for leaving instead of giving up to this nonsense and be remembered for taking amd downhill with this bad decision.
I would advice AMD to go in Nvidia's direction and create a Fission CPU with ARM architecture. Just like Nvidia will have a big impact due to its superior technology in GPU's (SMP), so too should AMD with it ATI division.
I know AMD has a lot invested in x86, but if Intel has not been able to lower the power consumption on x86 by now, AMD should not waste more money on that endeavor. I think is easier for AMD to switch architectures. AMD is not as married to x86 as Intel since they don't own the patents.
Bobcat destroy Atom in power, power efficiency and price. Is that what you call medioce? Come on...
Brazos is an awesome platform, not even with the help of ION Atom can compete, their cpu's sux, their igp sux, using nvidia ION the power consumption is near 50%+ higher than a equivalent Zacate+HD6310.
At the same price of an ION you get more cpu, more gpu more ram, HDD, etc with a Zacate setup.
If you actually look at how it performs over intel's offerings and at its pricepoint, I think you would completely reconsider this statement. At this point there are VERY few PC users that would ever need more than a Zacate based laptop... its quite snappy, plays 1080p vids great, multitasks well. Only thing it doesn't do is power-user stuff like 300dpi photoshop images, HD video editing, 3D rendering, etc. The majority of PC users don't do any of these things. I think AMD has a winner here and I think it will show in their earnings next year.
Personally i would never use a cloud service .. lack of security and most of the internet connections here in the US suck ! compared to england or austrailia seriously . i mean why would any one want to do that?... AMD should remain focused on whats important building on the core buisness of consumer and hardcore grade processors and not just some watered down chunk of silicon. opteron grade hardware/ reliability with the speed of a 980x would be awesome .. if you have not figgured it out .. apple and invidia pretty much have the low power processor market tied up baring a few snapdragons..point being stay focused dont give up just because things get difficult.