“Before he was named Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive on Mar. 30, almost no one other than investors in NCR Corp. knew the name Mark Hurd. While he had helped that once-moribund computer maker become a Wall Street high-flier, Hurd didn’t even make most observers’ dark-horse list of possible successors to Carly Fiorina, who was ousted in February. After all, NCR (NCR ) is roughly 1/16th the size of HP (HPQ ), and Hurd had never run a business aimed at consumers — the segment that makes up much of HP’s growth and profit. Hurd, 48, presents a striking contrast to Fiorina, the charismatic super-saleswoman lured from Lucent Technologies (LU ) in 1999 to inject some pizzazz back into HP,” BusinessWeek reports. “Hurd reflected on his new job, management philosophy, and plans for HP in two interviews with BusinessWeek Computer Editor Peter Burrows.”

Why did you decide to stop selling Apple’s iPod?
There are a lot of bets we can make, but we want to make those bets in markets that are exciting, have growth, are worth dominating — make that “leading,” the lawyers don’t like “dominating” — and in which, by the way, we can lead. So think about putting our logo on the iPod. Is the market worth leading? Maybe it is. But can we lead it, with no or very little technology differentiation? Doubtful. You have to go into places where you can lead.

Full article here.
Obviously, Hurd has a brain; there’s a striking contrast for you. Hurd understands that you can’t go around saying “invent” and then slapping your logo onto Apple’s iPod and reselling it. Hurd probably also understand that there are many other markets where HP has a better chance of competing right now than in the music player market dominated by Apple (contrary to HP’s lawyers, where appropriate, we like to use all forms of the word “dominate” for the sake of accuracy).

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Hewlett-Packard ousts CEO Carly Fiorina, and what was with that ‘Apple iPod by HP’ deal anyway? – February 09, 2005