Four months into the job, the new boss says Hewlett-Packard needs to get stronger in software.
Leo Apotheker stood before 4,000 Hewlett-Packard Co. colleagues recently, shielded from the afternoon Bangalore sun by a vast white tent.
Speaking with an accent that betrays his German roots, Apotheker vowed that as chief executive officer he would treat India more as a market than a source of low-cost labor for product development, as the company did under his predecessor Mark Hurd.
CEO since Nov. 1, Apotheker is breaking with Hurd's legacy in other ways. He's 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 and IBM. Apotheker is reversing Hurd's emphasis on cost-cutting in a bid to improve product quality and spur home-grown technology.
"HP has lost its soul," he said in an interview at Hewlett-Packard's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., offering a glimpse of the vision he will outline at an event Monday in San Francisco. "The first thing I wanted to do when I joined HP was listen to the people. The rank and file usually know about all the shortcomings."
Apotheker, a former CEO of German software maker SAP, takes the helm of a company facing slowing revenue growth and accelerating competition in cloud computing, a fast-growing technology that delivers software and storage via the Internet.
The new CEO says he's likely to buy more companies with software expertise, following HP's Feb. 14 acquisition of data analysis company Vertica for an undisclosed price. He said he's on the lookout for targets that will help HP beef up security and equip customers to analyze large amounts of data.
Apotheker says he also wants to make better use of WebOS, the computer operating system acquired last year when Hewlett-Packard purchased smart phone 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.
The move is aimed at enticing software developers to create a wider range of applications that would differentiate Hewlett-Packard PCs, printers, tablets and phones from those sold by rivals.
"Their Achilles' heel is software," said Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Co. in San Francisco.
Apotheker, a German-born Jew whose Polish parents fled the Nazis, is putting down roots in Silicon Valley. He and his wife bought a $7 million mansion 6 miles from HP's main offices, and have begun to renovate it. The family is keeping its house in Paris, where Apotheker has long resided.
"I consider myself a Californian now," says Apotheker. "I can even say 'awesome' and 'cool.'"
Speaking with an accent that betrays his German roots, Apotheker vowed that as chief executive officer he would treat India more as a market than a source of low-cost labor for product development, as the company did under his predecessor Mark Hurd.
CEO since Nov. 1, Apotheker is breaking with Hurd's legacy in other ways. He's 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 and IBM. Apotheker is reversing Hurd's emphasis on cost-cutting in a bid to improve product quality and spur home-grown technology.
"HP has lost its soul," he said in an interview at Hewlett-Packard's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., offering a glimpse of the vision he will outline at an event Monday in San Francisco. "The first thing I wanted to do when I joined HP was listen to the people. The rank and file usually know about all the shortcomings."
Apotheker, a former CEO of German software maker SAP, takes the helm of a company facing slowing revenue growth and accelerating competition in cloud computing, a fast-growing technology that delivers software and storage via the Internet.
The new CEO says he's likely to buy more companies with software expertise, following HP's Feb. 14 acquisition of data analysis company Vertica for an undisclosed price. He said he's on the lookout for targets that will help HP beef up security and equip customers to analyze large amounts of data.
Apotheker says he also wants to make better use of WebOS, the computer operating system acquired last year when Hewlett-Packard purchased smart phone 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.
The move is aimed at enticing software developers to create a wider range of applications that would differentiate Hewlett-Packard PCs, printers, tablets and phones from those sold by rivals.
"Their Achilles' heel is software," said Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Co. in San Francisco.
Apotheker, a German-born Jew whose Polish parents fled the Nazis, is putting down roots in Silicon Valley. He and his wife bought a $7 million mansion 6 miles from HP's main offices, and have begun to renovate it. The family is keeping its house in Paris, where Apotheker has long resided.
"I consider myself a Californian now," says Apotheker. "I can even say 'awesome' and 'cool.'"
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