<story><title>A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2011/08/hp_apotheker</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acangiano</author><text>I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd&apos;s scandal, &quot;the HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Good CEOs who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. Hurd was that CEO, Apotheker is not. And getting out of the consumer space, at a time when there are several paradigm shifts going on, means missing huge opportunities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>blinkingled</author><text>Firing Hurd was the right thing to do - I will argue that they were late. Hurd was seen as aligning with Oracle and making decisions that did not conflict  with Oracle. EDS, conveniently missed Sun acquisition, consumer focus in lieu of enterprise paints a consistent picture. There is a reason Hurd now works at Oracle and Larry did not like him getting fired. Besides show me what he did apart from cost cutting.&lt;p&gt;Apotheker comes from Oracle&apos;s competitor SAP. To that effect he isn&apos;t shy of focusing on interests that happen to conflict with Oracle&apos;s. To that end, what Gruber is saying is right - the board always wanted more Enterprise focus and that required going against Oracle. That&apos;s what Apotheker is doing.&lt;p&gt;As for missed opportunities - it does not matter. HP just does not have the DNA to do great in the already saturated PC and phone/tablets market. Not having to deal with that means they can focus their resources and capital where they are well oiled to do great. It only mattered if HP managed to get a CEO that can change its DNA - Neither Hurd nor Apotheker were into that. If they could have found a great consumer focused CEO with proven and relevant record, then it would have been worthwhile to risk competing in consumer space when it meant losing focus on Enterprise. Otherwise its just not really smart.&lt;p&gt;And they are still not giving up on webOS. But the only catches here are they don&apos;t yet know what to do with webOS and the Oracle/Itanium problem. With PSG off their bottom line they could now afford to ignore webOS until they find the right thing for it and focus their hardware resources to sell more proliants and fix the Itanium problem. That&apos;s the idea.</text></comment>
<story><title>A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2011/08/hp_apotheker</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acangiano</author><text>I think his interpretation of the facts is very plausible. Sadly, Larry Ellison was absolutely right when he said, at the time of Hurd&apos;s scandal, &quot;the HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Good CEOs who can revamp stagnant companies are hard to come by, particularly in the consumer space. Hurd was that CEO, Apotheker is not. And getting out of the consumer space, at a time when there are several paradigm shifts going on, means missing huge opportunities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>runjake</author><text>Firing Steve Jobs was the best thing Apple could have done, long term.&lt;p&gt;Apple is where it&apos;s at today because of what Steve Jobs learned and grew from his &quot;failures&quot;.</text></comment>