Why Leo Apotheker will be fired from Hewlett Packard (February 2011)

http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/why-leo-apotheker-will-be-fired-from-hewlett-packard/

by blumentopf • 15 years ago

88 24 15 years ago

Bud• 15 years ago

Wow, did Cringely ever nail this. Right on target with the observation that Apotheker "has no history in hardware"; six months later, Apotheker has basically eliminated most of HP's hardware business. PCs, phones and tablets are gone; only printers (and hopefully HP-41CX calculators!) are left.

Meanwhile, Apotheker has decided to compete in the cloud space. Some company named Apple has also decided to go big in the cloud, I hear. Gee, I wonder who will win that battle.

HP better hope that none of the big boys decide to eat their lunch in the printer market, or they may not survive at all.

bad_user• 15 years ago

     Some company named Apple has also decided to go
     big in the cloud, I hear. Gee, I wonder who will 
     win that battle.

There are bigger fish than Apple in "the cloud" that HP would have to worry about -- Amazon, Google, Rackspace, heck even Microsoft wants a piece.

Giving up WebOS is the stuppidest thing they ever did.

cube132• 15 years ago

>There are bigger fish than Apple in "the cloud" that HP would have to worry about -- Amazon, Google, Rackspace, heck even Microsoft wants a piece.

Why? At least 3 of the 5 cloud providers you mentioned(Amazon, Apple and MS) use HP servers as a part of their hardware infrastructure. It's not like HP isn't making money from them, and I sincerely doubt that market is going anywhere, considering how many services are moving to cloud-based computing.

Adkron• 15 years ago

It really wasn't stupid for their business moves. Software was not their market, and they don't have the market share to compete with Android and iOS.

I loved the webOS platform. I'm still using my pre +, but that doesn't make it a right more for HP. I do wish they would have open sourced it. I would like to see it as a desktop os someday.

I do think this guy messed up in handling the marketing of webs, but that is more him trusting advisors. The CEO doesn't do everything, but is responsible for it.

Good luck to him, but I think he is gone too.

CrLf• 15 years ago

You are forgetting HP's server business.

suking• 15 years ago

Article loses credibility (imo) when it says Hurd was a worse hire than Fiorina. Hurd practically doubled the stock value for shareholders during his tenure and was considered an AMAZING CEO. Yeah, he disgraced HP a little with the sexual harassment issue, but that doesn't mean he wasn't an effective leader.

yuhong• 15 years ago

Judging companies just by stock price is a horrible idea.

masklinn• 15 years ago

If your goal is to make a quick buck on your shares, it's perfect.

And that's all these CEOs are brought in for. So by that metric, Hurd was a stellar CEO.

rhizome• 15 years ago

How much of that stock bounce was due simply to Hurd isn't Carly?

forgotAgain• 15 years ago

Hurd was terrible. He was a one trick pony who did nothing but cut, cut, cut. That might have helped with the stock price and quarterly targets for a couple of years but it was short term thinking and ruined HP as a high-end consulting and software company.

Cushman• 15 years ago

Hey, if it works for the Federal government...

schraeds• 15 years ago

Hurd slashed and burned HP. Cut R&D, outsourced... They lost their core competency and innovation for the benefit of short-term stock gains. Not long-term at all.

justincormack3• 15 years ago

Clearly they didnt have enough money to buy SAP, hence the purchase of Autonomy.

If they sell the pc and printer businesses it might be possible I suppose. Or more likely a merger.

rbanffy• 15 years ago

I am happy HP's founders are no longer alive to see this happen.

I have seen something similar happen to Unisys. Sad, very sad.

Mrich30• 15 years ago

I wonder whether the integration of SAP and HP would be possible, has there ever been a successful fusion between a mostly US/mostly european company (speaking of development)?

justincormack3• 15 years ago

Maybe buying (uk based) Autonomy is a trial run? We will see with Microsoft and Skype (Estonia). I cant think of any big examples, though there was ICL Fujitsu (uk Japan), Europe does not have a lot of large software companies.

dr_• 15 years ago

Doesn't the article actually explain why he won't get fired? It suggests that in order to survive he needs to increase HPs market share in enterprise software. Hardware decisions aside, this purchase seems to me to indicate he is doing just that. SAP may be out of their league - for now.

jeffreymcmanus• 15 years ago

His Meg Whitman theory is nonsense. Not only does she have not a lick of hardware or software experience (her expertise is in consumer internet, which is different than both those businesses), if the board is really looking for somebody to "knock back brewskies with the engineers," Whitman is probably the last person in the world they'll pick. When she was at eBay she was fanatical about insulating herself from the engineering organization.

crag• 15 years ago

I doubt SAP would want to be sold. HP is in no position for a hostile takeover.

Their [HP] best bet, IMHO is dump this guy, sell off the consumer pc business and get back to their core.

How many predicted this would happened when HP merged with Compaq?.

Why Leo Apotheker will be fired from Hewlett Packard (February 2011)

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