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What a mess. The board at HP is reportedly set to meet about potentially ousting CEO Leo Apotheker after he’s held the top spot for less than a year.
If you remember, Apotheker took over for Mark Hurd, who resigned after some embarrassing personal allegations came out. The two men apparently had very different visions for the company, as Hurd spearheaded the $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in order to help strengthen HP’s position in the future of computing.
Apotheker had other ideas.
HP’s current CEO is pursuing more of an enterprise solutions business, which generally has much higher margins than producing hardware. After releasing the HP Veer and TouchPad, Apotheker brought the hammer down on webOS and strongly intimated that it will sell its personal computing division. Of course, saying you want to sell it without a buyer leaves you in a weak position, so now, HP is just a freaking mess.
To be fair, Apotheker’s vision can be considered bold, as he’s moving the company away from a tried-and-true business model and toward one that may actually benefit it in the future. I think the issue has been his execution and management. We’ll be sure to keep an eye on this story as it develops and let us know what you think in the comments.
About The Author
Marin Perez
Marin Perez has torture tested cell phones and smartphones for industry leaders like CNET and InformationWeek. He remembers when 4G was just a screen on PowerPoint presentations and is fascinated with the amount of innovation out there. Marin has spent a lot of time with BlackBerry and Android but he finally broke down a bought an iPhone to see what all the hype's about. He also has too many tablets.
