HP's Meg Whitman: New CEO, same old strategy

[Renew Deal]

Hewlett-Packard needs massive changes, and it needs them fast. But judging by her debut today as CEO, it doesn't look like Meg Whitman will deliver them. On a conference call with analysts and the media this afternoon, the former eBay CEO and failed gubernatorial candidate said she supports HP's August initiatives, including the death of the TouchPad and other WebOS hardware and a possible spin-off of the PC business.

Whitman said that a decision on the future of the company's Personal Systems Group "isn't like fine wine. It won't get better with age," and she promised to make up her mind by the end of the year, "if not sooner." But she gave no hint of what that decision will be.

The clear message delivered by Whitman and Ray Lane, who is now executive chairman of the board of directors, was that the short reign of Léo Apotheker failed because he couldn't execute, communicate, or build a working management team. But there was no hint from either of the two top executives that Apotheker's strategy was flawed. I didn't count, but the word "communicate," as in "failed to communicate," was used over and over again, leading one to think that the problem wasn't the decisions made by Apotheker, but how he explained them -- or failed to.
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/hps-meg-whitman-new-ceo-same-old-strategy-173792

HP is listless.

[TheWraith]

1. No, HP is fucked.

Actually, they've been heading this direction for a long time--they haven't really had any kind of strategy to speak of since 2004, and on the occasions that they hit the mark with a good product, they manage to kill it through horribly bad marketing, or support incompetence, or both.

Getting out of the PC business, though, is their worst decision yet. IBM at least had a good reason to: they have a legitimate enterprise software and support arm that is actually their primary business, with hardware as a sideline. For HP, their enterprise operations are marginal. They have always been primarily a hardware company. It makes as much sense as if you had Microsoft giving up on Windows in order to make video game consoles as their primary business.

[daa]

3. You missed Hurd canceling research to make the numbers

look good. Now they have nothing to sell. The employee moral is very low and I fail to see Whitman doing anything about that.

[TheWraith]

5. Good point.

I suspect summarizing all of HP's screwups, or even just the ones of their management in the last decade or so, would far exceed the available length of a DU post.

[Eddie Haskell]

4. Worst software I ever owned was an HP All-in-One printer suite.

I got rid of the printer just so I could get rid of the software.

[bemildred]

2. Indeed HP is fucked.

And Meg is just the CEO to do a thorough job of it.

[Cassandra]

6. With Whitman there...

likely when my HP Pavilion goes, I'll go over to a Mac.