The Business Blunders of 2011

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 30 December 2011, 20:43 IST
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3. CEO issues of Hewlett Packard:

In June, HP unveiled the much awaited TouchPad tablet. This product was supposed to give a tough competition to Apple’s iPad but its existence became momentary, only for six weeks as it had a very poor sales rate. HP also announced that this would be the ultimate exit from the tablet business altogether. This withdrawal of Tablet became the exit for the company’s CEO as well. HP fired the CEO Leo Apotheker and replaced him with former CEO Meg Whiteman. He later pushed back sales of the HP’s tablet into the market. The company was numb and was not willing to disclose a proper reason for the exit of Leo. But HP asserted that they need additional attributes to modify company strategy. It seems Whiteman was being chosen because of superior “operational and communication skills”.