HP's CEO, Leo Apotheker, who joined the company in November 2010, has spoken candidly about where he thinks the company has lost its way and how it plans to regroup.
Echoing Nokia's now infamous 'burning platform' memo to staff just before it announced its partnership with Microsoft, Apotheker told journalists that, "HP has lost its soul".
Unlike Nokia, Apotheker believes the solution lies with listening to and appeasing HP workers: "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."
Apps are the name of the game
As well as reinstating the company's soul through its staff, Apotheker confirmed that HP is planning to purchase more companies with software expertise – like it's April 2010 acquisition of Palm which was inspired, for the most part, by Palm's webOS software.
Speaking of which, Apotheker also said that HP will be making better use of webOS, including making every PC shipped by HP next year able to run the Palm-built OS as well as Windows.
When HP's shipments all include webOS, the company will have phones, tablets, laptops and desktops all running the software, making it a much more enticing prospect for software developers and, HP hopes, increasing the number of webOS apps – currently at a rather paltry 6,000.
From Business Week via Engadget
