$99 HP TouchPad: Will New CEO Meg Whitman Revive Tablet?
Meg Whitman has now taken the reigns of a company that failed miserably at staking its claim in the tablet computer market.
The $99 HP TouchPad is arguably the best value-for-money product in electronics this year, but came after Hewlett-Packard decided to bow out of selling tablets and slashed its prices.
However, HP’s new CEO, Meg Whitman, seems to be moving the company in a different direction, away from hardware.
After declining sales in hardware like personal computers and failing to achieve success with the TouchPad, HP announced that it would be concentrating more on software and Whitman seems to be on board with that plan.
In her first interview as HP’s new CEO, Whitman confirmed that the company is standing by plans to acquire U.K. software market Autonomy Corp. for $10.3 billion.
She also stated that the company will continue to explore whether to sell or spin off the personal computer division, which was a move announced by HP on Aug. 18.
“It does not signal a change in the strategy,” Whitman said yesterday in the interview. “We are behind the actions that were taken on Aug. 18. We are firmly committed to Autonomy.”
Whitman is known for working magic at company’s such as eBay, where she turned a 30-employee $4 million annual revenue firm into a giant with 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue in ten years.
“I have run a large company-not obviously as large as HP, but I have run a very large company,” she said. “While I don’t have years of experience in an enterprise business, I bought a lot of software. I was one of the largest enterprise customers in Silicon Valley.”
According to HP’S new CEO’s statements, it does not seem like she plans to change the company’s strategy.
Software seems to be staying the focus, so products like the TouchPad will probably receive little attention.
This summer’s fire sale did generate an enormous buzz for the device, so Whitman could be just the right person to find a way to capitalize off of that.
