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Egan Ford:
Meg probably rolled into the boardroom and amazed the board with the profits of HP calc's on eBay.
In related news, HP's soon to be not yet CEO Meg Whitman announced a plan to spin off every line of business in HP's portfolio but calculators. "We see a tremendous opportunity in handheld calculating devices," Whitman stated, in a not actually quite yet a CEO interview with selected members of an online calculator forum. "The value of physical buttons cannot be over-emphasized. Take that, iPhone!"
In separate interview, almost pre-announced HP CEO Meg Whitman announced a patent suite against Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Facebook and IBM. Two patents are at issue. The first describes a "method and apparatus for summing two numbers." The second concerns "A cookbook recipe for making calculator keys feel nice and clicky without necessarily indicating a successful registering of the keystroke."
The announcement was coupled with a new video depicting Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a bizarrely garbed wolf among a flock of hapless calculator toting sheep.
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Great. Another leak of our strategery.
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Another leak of our strategery.
Maybe HP's problem is they have a "strategery" (sorry, I couldn't let that go ;-)
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How can we be a strategerific company without a strategery? ;)
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Surely a stratergy of paying lawyers millions and spending years of time and all the company's effort in court fighting patent suits is completely stratergificacious?
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That's not a strategy HP is defining on its own. That's the result of a broken system that allows patents to be used as anticompetitive weapons. The system is such that you have to pay those lawyers and engage in litigation whether you think it's a good idea or not. HP certainly isn't the worst offender in that column either.
I just thought patents on addition and clicky keys would add to the joke. :)
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May well be the system is broken at more than one end. By the mere rumor of L.A. been fired, HP's stock raised by 10% IIRC, by the knowledge of M.W. been chosen it dropped by 6%. Gives a nice math problem: Assume the rating is now as it was before the rumor, find how high it is ;-)
Seriously: When do we stop those casino players controlling our business? And ruining world economy? The longer I observe this and think about it the more I become a friend of Tobin tax.
Edited: 23 Sept 2011, 4:08 p.m.
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And it is now official.
Meg Whitman is announced as the new CEO of HP
Edited: 22 Sept 2011, 4:31 p.m.
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I don't know if that spoils the joke or not. :)
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I am thinking Meg Whitman is the joke :)
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Well, she's certainly an easy target, having been exposed to public scrutiny as a candidate for governor. OTOH, I wish her good luck at doing the right thing by the calculator group. Unfortunately, it's probable calculators have zero visibility at the CEO level.
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I am thinking Meg Whitman is the joke :)
Actually, it's the whole HP Board that is the joke. They've got through, what, 7 CEOs in 10 years? Apoetheker lasted less than a year. Not a good track record. IMHO, the entire Board should be replaced. As a shareholder, I'm peeved!
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Took the opportunity and checked the board. Some "statistics":
Of 13 people listed, 1 is member of the board since 2002, 1 since 2005, 2 since 2006, 2 since 2009, and 7 since 2011.
The vast majority seems to qualify by a background in "private equity/venture capital" and/or "counselling/consulting". Found very little traces of tech bases only. And I love Meg's record ;-)
Looks pretty desperate :-( Time to abandon the ship heading to floral business, and create/found/establish something new in the spirit of Bill and Dave? Maybe even in a country where case law doesn't rule? Really hard to tell :-/
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Took the opportunity and checked the board. Some "statistics":
Of 13 people listed, 1 is member of the board since 2002, 1 since 2005, 2 since 2006, 2 since 2009, and 7 since 2011.
The vast majority seems to qualify by a background in "private equity/venture capital" and/or "counselling/consulting". Found very little traces of tech bases only. And I love Meg's record ;-)
And in light of those folks, all the nutty decisions in recent years make sense. First they decide to make a tablet, then they abruptly stop. Then they decide to get out of the personal computing business, then they abruptly reverse course. There appears to be no direction and no adult in the room to point the way. I hope Meg can do that.
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