Critical moment

We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead. Meg is a research visionary with a proven track record of execution. She is a strong communicator who is customer focused with deep leadership capabilities. Even more, as a member of HP's board of directors for the past eight months, Meg has a solid understanding of our products and markets.

Company the size of HP

Whitman has not run a company the size of HP, nor one focused on the enterprise, both of which are concerns that are made more important by the fact that HP is in need of a turnaround in many lines of business, not just a new strategic direction.

While we believe she has proven to be a very capable manager helping grow eBay from a start-up into one of the largest internet companies, we think an ideal candidate for HPQ should have extensive experience in the enterprise market. Should the contingency arise, we believe expertise in supply chain management would be helpful as then.

We continue to believe the disruption at HP could prove positive for other PC competitors just as Dell and Apple given potential for disruptions that include shelf-space reductions and a lack of focus. We as well note that IBM and Dell could potentially benefit from any disruptions at HP in terms of server sales and NetApp and EMC could benefit in storage. In terms of services, IBM may see some outsourcing wins vs. HP over time if dislocation persists.

The Enterprise Irregulars mailing list

Among the Enterprise Irregulars mailing list, HP watchers publicly questioned the initial hiring of Apotheker. Since Apotheker only knew software, some quipped that HP hired a CEO that knew only 4 per cent of the company's business. As noted by Jeff Nolan at Venture Chronicles, you could argue that Whitman knows zero per cent of HP's business.

It's unclear whether Apotheker was given much of a chance to carry out HP's strategy. He had to grow a software business, bolster services and shed low margin businesses. On the surface, that strategy makes sense.

The tablet effect is real

The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations. The velocity of change in the personal device marketplace continues to increase as the competitive landscape is growing increasingly more complex especially around the personal computing arena. There's a clear secular movement in the consumer PC space. The impact of the economy has impacted consumer sales and the tablet effect is real and our TouchPads has not been gaining enough traction in the marketplace.

On HP's bread-and-butter businesses just as servers, Apotheker as well said that Oracle was hurting business because it wasn't supporting the Itanium chip. Add it up and there were multiple holes for HP and Apotheker to plug and not enough time.

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