The current two dimensional HP logo used on corporate documents, letterheads, etc. (Photo credit:... [+]
Scrutiny, belatedly so, is the best thing that will come out of Hewlett-Packard’s embarrassing Autonomy deal. The company’s recent string of self-inflicted wounds will be studied for quite some time in business schools everywhere. I would imagine that as young aspiring CEOs walk into the class, university professors will have already written on the board “Hewlett-Packard: Just When You Think Things Can’t Get Any Worse.”
I blasted the company for its failure to stand behind former CEO Marc Hurd for some “indiscretions,” but this time I think the company should act quickly and dismiss Meg Whitman because that’s what good companies do over execution failures. On Tuesday reports surfaced that Apple fired Maps manager Richard Williamson, the person deemed responsible for the “map-gate” situation with the iPhone 5. Likewise, Intel recently ousted its CEO Paul Otellini, albeit two years too late, for the company’s inability to adapt to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets. As much as Otellini is respected, he was too closely tied to the PC age, now in its decline. The mobile movement has caused rivals such as Qualcomm and ARM Holdings to dominate the space.
If you need a reminder that a change at the top can help, check out the resurgence that Yahoo has seen since hiring Marrisa Mayer. It's still early days, but so far it the speed with which Yahoo has acquired credibility with investors has been nothing short of remarkable. Much like HP, Yahoo has had its own share of failures at the CEO turnstile but with Mayer at the helm, Yahoo now seen as fresh and new and the stock price has made hew highs with no meaningful signs of slowing down.
What Forstall Will Bring
On the heels of the Autonomy scandal, HP needs a new direction. The company has no choice but to get rid of Whitman. Her replacement should be Scott Forstall, Apple’s former Senior Vice President of IOS. Forstall will ignite HP like it has never seen before. What’s more, he will help HP compete more effectively with Apple – for no other reason than the fact that he wants revenge. I don’t think he needs more motivation than this.
Forstall would immediately stop the hemorrhaging in both the company's market shares and its stock price. In my opinion, his first course of action would be to reinvigorate HP’s WebOS business and figure out a way to make it a respectable name in mobile. After all, if Research in Motion can spend almost two years developing BB10, should it be that outrageous to expect WebOS to revitalize HP? RIM's stock price has surged over 50% on the anticipated launch alone.
Forstall can then figure out if WebOS should become proprietary as with Apple’s IOS or should it be licensed to device makers as with Android? This will become a sensitive issue since HP will immediately become a competitor to its OEM partner in Microsoft - but so what. Microsoft didn't ask HP's permission when it entered hardware with its Surface tablet - essentially saying "it is now every man for himself." I doubt that it is in Forstall's character to even care.
HP will then become better positioned to compete with other PC manufacturers such as Dell and Lenovo. What’s more, the company will also create additional enterprise and consumer leverage against hated rivals in Oracle and Cisco.
For now, shares of HP still look undervalued. But absent some clear direction of where the company is going I don’t have any confidence that Whitman and the rest of the management team can realize any value that is left in the company. Forstall is a hire that HP has to make if the company truly cares about its future and its investors.
