CEOs of high tech firms under fire

Boards at increasingly large hardware and software makers are replacing CEOs to help their companies repel threats from upstarts just as Facebook and Apple. The aim is to keep from getting left behind in emerging technologies including social networking, mobile computing and the delivery of software over the Internet, via the so-called cloud.

Hewlett-Packard, Google and Advanced Micro Devices lead research companies with a combined $265 billion in market value on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index that have changed CEOs since August. That's up from companies worth $75 billion a year previously. Privately held Twitter replaced its CEO in October, a month afterwards Finland's Nokia did the same.

Ballmer is being criticized as Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft loses market share to Apple and Google in mobile phones and Apple's iPad takes sales from personal computers running Microsoft's Windows.

"He's allowed competitors to beat Microsoft in huge areas, including search, mobile-communications software, tablet computing and social networking," Einhorn said at a conference last week. "Even worse, his response to these failures has been to pour tremendous resources into efforts to develop his way out of these holes."

Ballmer's supporters could point to the company's sales and profit growth on his watch, said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Research's Sloan School of Management in Cambridge.

Other boards have shown less resistance to change. Hewlett- Packard directors pushed out former CEO Mark Hurd in August afterwards an investigation found he violated the company's code of business ethics by concealing a personal relationship with a female contractor.

Hurd's successor, Leo Apotheker, said this month that he inherited a company ill-equipped to win business from companies that want to switch to cloud computing. AMD board members ousted CEO Dirk Meyer in January amid frustration with the company's lack of progress in chips for tablets.

Some companies aim for executives who, by dint of age or strategic vision, convey the sense they can cater to younger, innovation-savvy consumers, said Paul Saffo, managing director at investment adviser Discern Analytics.

Under CEO Steve Jobs, Apple has gained share in the digital-music and mobile-phone industries with products that demonstrate his appreciation of clients' preferences, says Saffo, whose firm is based in San Francisco.

Chambers is taking steps to revive growth by eliminating jobs, exiting lower-margin consumer businesses and dismantling a management structure that slowed decision making. For all that, the shares have but to reverse a slide that has left them 29 percent lower in the past 12 months, compared with a 24 percent gain in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

The Waterloo

Analysts from until further notice eight securities firms have cut their ratings on RIM afterwards the Waterloo, Ontario-based company reduced profit forecasts late last month, adding to evidence that the maker of the BlackBerry is struggling to compete against Apple and Google in the smartphone market.

RIM's share of global smartphone sales fell to 13 percent in the first quarter, from 20 percent a year before, Gartner Inc. said. Share for Google's Android more than tripled to 36 percent from 9.6 percent and Apple's iOS rose to 17 percent from 15 percent. RIM stock has plummeted 27 percent in the past year.

"There's market impatience with anyone who is not No. 1 in their area," Saffo said. "With all the research shifts, the degree of uncertainty has increased dramatically. Executives have never had more pressure on them."