Rumor: HP Looking To Fire CEO After Less Than A Year
And it looks like they're casting flirty glances at Meg Whitman.
New HP CEO Leo Apotheker's months-long leadership of the beleaguered IT giant may be coming to an ignoble end as soon as this week. Earlier today, Business Week reported confirmation via anonymous insiders that the Board, currently meeting at HP headquarters, is now seriously considering sacking him and the candidate widely tipped as his replacement is supposedly former eBay CEO and failed California gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman.
It's true that Apotheker's tenure hasn't been a roaring success. Since taking over in November, 2010, HP has been forced to lower sales forecasts 3 times and the company stock has dropped nearly 50 percent in value. Serious problems to be sure, but not entirely Apotheker' fault. HP has been in something of a downward spiral for years, dogged by high-profile tablet and smartphone failures, expense account 'irregularities', not to mention the infamous 2005 employee spying scandal, all of which happened under Mark Hurd's watch. But Apotheker was brought in after Hurd's resignation to right the ship of corporate state and his failure to do so quickly has apparently soured whatever good will he had with HP's Board.Â
While Whitman's high profile loss to Governor Jerry Brown isn't a mark on her ties to big business, the gubernatorial campaign exposed her to significant criticism for her handling of eBay's top job, particularly an alleged shoving incident in 2007 that occurred just before her resignation. Her tenure at eBay was otherwise successful, but her lack of experience in hardware, not to mention her negative public image would make her a curious choice. Then again, under Apotheker's time as CEO, HP has made some dramatic strategy shifts that undermined investor confidence and only accentuated their other missteps.Â
As of this writing, no official confirmation of Apotheker's replacement, or who it would be, has been released.
i always route for HP to go out of business so i agree hire this guy
Are you sure? You would probably have to quit your day job as an internet troll.
Meg lucked in on a new idea, and managed to bring it to market. When it became successful she could not handle the business, and the business was better off without her when she left. But even being better off it is still the most backwards unfriendly site I have ever used in my life.
HP has always been the poor mans dell. And dell has always been crap (with the exception of their business class hardware which is quite usable, and actually has real customer support). And when you are in the position of being a poor mans crap then there is plenty of room for improvement. Even small improvements would be highly noticeable. Not saying it isn't possible to fix, but my bet is that they flounder for 10 more years before becoming the next gateway where you hear their name and think "wait... didn't they go out of business a while back?"
I am BEGGING, no PLEADING for the families of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard to get involved and somehow take back control of the company before it is completely too late to save HP!
Are we supposed to believe that HP can find NO qualified, worthy successors to this latest dope Mr Apotheker somewhere within the company, someone who actually cares about the products and the people? I don't believe it for ONE minute.
first off, revive the pc department.
second, take a serious look at the tablet land scape and find a GOOD solution.
third, move over to amd exclusively, with the exception of extreme high end, and cuda necessary software
everything we ship will have an apu in it, as to cut the cost of production and make even that cheap pos the family gets because they need a computer, able to play nearly any game at reduced graphical settings. but shipping with 4gb of ram.
mid range we will go phenom II 3.2 ghz minimum and a 6770 gpu, and 8gb of ram
high end we will go bulldozer, as it would be out by the time the pc department is revived, and a 7850 on a mother board that can be upgraded to crossfire, shipping with 16gb or ram
now for the tablet/phone land scape, we have to do some real thinking. if its not patented, i want to have a iphone/touch device, that plugs into a tablet, laptop, and gaming shell. market it as the first real gaming phone, and market the peripherals (the shells) as compatible with future iphones/touches. not saying the shells wont get upgraded models too, but thats not important.
for the tablet specifically, i would see if we can license off wacom tech, as a wacom tablet would be epic.
for the laptop side, there would be 2 versions, one that converts a tablet into a laptop, and one that is just laptop.
but thats just what someone who wants to make a good company and make user benefiting decisions would do.
On the other hand if they were to implement major policy changes and divide the company into area centered units, it'd be way easier to reduce the prices of products and offer better after sales services to millions of very upset customers. and do a little good to the company and it's image as a whole.
Changing heads is just like blaming it on rio, you can change one head of the company every month and blame all the crap on the last one, it won't do them any good though.
Make one stick and make him see the company through thick and thin. and if one head is not sufficient get a few more to handle other stuff.
I'd say make it work.
And.....
Make it work way better than it was before this.
Low margin != Unprofitable
HP-fail is due to lack of differentiation. Apple does well because it takes the boutique experience to the extreme. HP is trying to out do Apple AND do it at a lower cost by maintaining low quality and support (e.g. A $300 PC). You can't compete with Apple using cheaper products and less marketing dollars. Make a better product and charge more for it. The consumer PC business is cutthroat because all the sharks are
fighting over the shallow end. Voodoo-PC should have fixed that for HP, but got swallowed by middle management drones instead. It's what happens in big companies when people lose their jobs for publicly having a different point of view.
Trying to adopt Apple way in the PC world is not going to help a company, it will only sink them. PC nowadays has become commodity product like a toaster or microwave. Margin is going to be thin and the mean to continue to stay in business is to accurately manage the supply and cost to meet the demand. One way to diversify is to venture into new line of businesses like mp3 player, TV, smart phone etc.