HP CEO since Nov. 1, Leo Apotheker is “overhauling HP’s $41 billion personal-computer division and says he will use acquisitions to expand in the software market, dominated by rivals such as Oracle Corp. and International Business Machines Corp,” Aaron Ricadela reports for Bloomberg. “Apotheker is reversing Hurd’s emphasis on cost-cutting in a bid to improve product quality and spur home-grown technology, and he’s touring HP’s offices to find ways to get products to market more quickly.”
“‘HP has lost its soul,’ he said in an interview at Hewlett-Packard’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, offering a glimpse of the vision he will outline in greater detail at an event on March 14 in San Francisco,” Ricadela reports. “Apotheker, 57, resigned as CEO of German software maker SAP AG in February 2010 amid falling sales, clashes with unions over job cuts and a price increase that vexed customers. He takes the helm of a company facing slowing revenue growth and accelerating competition in cloud computing, a fast-growing area of technology that delivers software and storage via the Internet.”
Ricadela reports, “Apotheker says he also wants to make better use of WebOS, the computer-operating system acquired last year when Hewlett-Packard purchased smartphone maker Palm Inc. for $1.2 billion. Starting next year, every one of the PCs shipped by HP will include the ability to run WebOS in addition to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, Apotheker said.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Apotheker is saying all the right things. Whether he can get things done effectively is the question.